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THE  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM 
LINCOLN  AND  ITS  EXPIATION 


THE  MACMILLAN   COMPA!^ 

NEW  YORK   -    BOSTON   •    CHICAGO 
ATLANTA   •    SAN   FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limitkd 

LONDON  •    BOMBAY   •    CALCUTTA 
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THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


THE  ASSASSINATION  OF 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 


AND  ITS  EXPIATION 


BY 

DAVID  MILLER  DEWITT 

author  of  "the  impeachment  and  trial  or  president  johnson' 


jfSelt)  gorfe 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
1909 

A II  rights  reserved 


/ 


COPYKIGBT.  ig09 

By  the  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.    Printed  January.  1909 


THE  MASON-HENRY  pebss 

8TEACU8K,    NEW    YOBK 


/i? 


0 

^  TO  GEORGE  CHANDLER,  M.D. 

t 

whose  skill  alone  rendered  the  work  possi- 
ble and   whose   sagacity  in   the    darkest 

>J-  hour  foretold  its  completion,  this  book  is 

^  gratefully  dedicated. 

0> 


PEEFACE 

The  assassination  of  Abraham  Lincoln  was  a  crime 
so  revolting,  so  unprovoked  and  from  every  point  of 
view  so  gratuitous  and  maleficent  that  it  has  found  no 
open,  and  scarcely  a  secret,  apologist  even  amongst 
the  public  enemies  of  the  illustrious  victim.  The 
banded  slayers  of  **the  mightiest  Julius"  have  found 
defenders  down  to  the  present  day.  The  single-handed 
assassins  of  William  the  Silent  and  of  the  Great 
Henry  of  France — each  was  actuated  by  fanatical 
devotion  to  a  creed,  many  of  the  votaries  of  which 
regarded  them  as  but  instruments  in  the  hand  of  an 
insulted  Deity.  But  neither  resistance  to  tyrants  nor 
obedience  to  God  ever  has  been  pleaded  in  extenuation 
of  the  taking-off  of  this  tribune  of  the  plain  people, 
''with  malice  toward  none,  with  charity  for  all." 

So  world-shocking  an  event,  with  its  train  of 
dramatic  incidents,  should  not  be  left  ''compassed 
murkily  about"  by  "the  din  and  dust"  of  popular 
fury  raised  by  an  overwhelming  calamity  to  the  nation. 
No  circumstance  should  remain  doubtful,  no  detail 
obscure.  Every  stroke  of  the  brush  should  be  true 
to  nature  and  fact;  the  lights  and  shades  evenly  dis- 
tributed; and  every  unverified  tradition  traced  to  its 
source.  There  should  be  no  ambiguity  about  the 
lessons  to  be  deduced ;  and  if  among  those  drawn  into 
the  whirlpool  set  up  by  so  sudden  a  subversion  of  the 

vii 


viii  PREFACE 

current  of  hninan  affairs,  there  were  any  that  suffered 
an  unjust  doom,  their  innocence  should  be  made  clear 
beyond  further  question. 

To  do  this  thoroughly,  however,  seems  on  first  view 
to  be  a  labor  like  the  cleansing  of  the  Augean  stables 
and  call  for  another  Hercules.  The  swarms  of  legends, 
myths,  fables  and  even  downright  lies  that  have  set- 
tled around  the  central  theme  are  well-nigh  impene- 
trable, and  were  it  not  for  one  feature  of  the  case,  to 
undertake  such  a  task  would  be  idle  as  well  as  fool- 
hardy. That  exceptional  feature  is  that  every  scene  of 
every  act  in  the  awful  tragedy — the  most  trivial  as  well 
as  the  most  momentous — has  been  the  subject-matter 
of  sworn  testimony  before  three  different  tribunals 
engaged  in  rigorous  pursuit  of  the  facts:  testimony 
subjected  to  examination,  direct  and  cross,  on  the  part 
of  both  sides  of  the  particular  issue  joined,  every  item 
of  which  is  a  matter  of  official  record.  To  sift  that 
testimony  with  an  impartial  hand  and  at  the  same 
time  exclude  every  statement,  narrative,  sensational 
story,  whether  from  history,  biography,  memoir, 
diary,  magazine  or  newspaper,  for  which  chapter  and 
verse  out  of  that  three-fold  record  are  not  forth- 
coming:— by  this  method  and  by  this  method  alone, 
the  truth  may  possibly  emerge  from  the  mass  of  false- 
hood under  which  it  lies  buried. 

This,  at  all  events,  is  the  method  adopted  in  the 
preparation  of  the  following  work ;  and  the  facts,  thus 
ascertained,  are  for  the  most  part  left  to  speak  for 
themselves. 


PREFACE  ix 

N.  B. — The  authorities  above  alluded  to  are  the 
Conspiracy  Trial  (Poore*s  edition  and  the  official 
report  of  Pitman),  cited  under  the  letters  C.  T. ;  the 
Trial  of  John  H.  Surratt  (official),  cited  under  the 
letters  S.  T.,  and  the  Impeachment  Investigation  of 
1867,  cited  as  Imp.  Inv. 


CONTENTS 
CHAPTER   I 

PAGR 

The  Plot  to  Capture ^._.,      1 

CHAPTER   II 
The  Assassination 38 

CHAPTER    III 
The  Reign  op  Terror— Capture  and  Death  of  Booth    55 

CHAPTER    IV 
The  Conspiracy  Trial 92 

CHAPTER   V 
The  Findings,  Sentences  and  Execution 128 

CHAPTER   VI 
The  Question  of  Jurisdiction 142 

CHAPTER    VII 
The  Dwindling  of  the  "Great  Conspiracy" 165 

CHAPTER    VIII 
The  Trial  of  John  H.  Surratt- 184 

CHAPTER    IX 
The  Petition  for  Commutation 221 

L  'Envoy 256 

Appendix 259 

Index .._ 296 

xi 


THE  ASSASSINATION 

OF 

ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 


CHAPTER  I 

The  Plot  to  Captuke 

On  tlie  sixth  day  of  July,  1821,  at  Richmond,  Vir- 
ginia, an  actor  bearing  the  name  of  Junius  Brutus 
Booth  made  his  first  public  appearance  in  the  United 
States.  Born  in  London  in  1796,  at  the  age  of  seven- 
teen he  took  to  the  stage,  joining  a  company  strolling  in 
the  provinces  which  for  one  season  varied  its  customary 
tour  by  a  voyage  to  the  Low  Countries.  He  had  hardly 
reached  his  majority  before  the  celebrity  won  by  his 
impersonation  of  Richard  III  brought  him  an  invita- 
tion from  the  management  of  Covent  Garden  theatre 
to  appear  in  the  metropolis  in  competition  with  Edmund 
Kean — then,  at  the  height  of  his  fame,  playing  that 
character  at  Drury  Lane,  and  whom,  it  was  said,  '*in 
figure,  voice  and  manner  Booth  so  closely  resembled 
that  he  might  be  taken  for  his  twin  brother."  So  satis- 
factory was  the  experiment  that  negotiations  were  set 
on  foot  for  a  steady  engagement,  in  the  midst  of  which 
the  young  actor  was  beguiled  into  the  acceptance  of 
an  offer  from  the  rival  establishment  to  play  lago  to 
Kean's  Othello  by  the  personal  solicitations  of  the 
1  (1) 


2    ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

great  tragedian  himself.  The  announcement  of  this 
double  performance  packed  Old  Drury  from  pit  to 
dome,  Kean  acting  "as  he  never  acted  before"  and  his 
associate  "fairly  dividing  the  crown  and  keeping  up 
the  ball  completely  between  them";  but,  the  second 
night,  Booth,  on  the  ground  that  "every  character  he 
was  desirous  or  capable  of  plaj^ng  was  already  in 
possession,"  declined  to  appear  and  incontinently  went 
back  to  Richard  III  at  Covent  Garden,  where  at  his 
reappearance  the  friends  of  Kean  raised  a  tumult  so 
deafening  that  for  a  few  nights  his  acting  was  mere 
dumb  show ;  and  it  was  only  by  the  persistent  support 
of  the  managers  that  he  was  able  to  complete  his 
engagement.  Though  he  appeared  the  next  two  sea- 
sons at  the  same  theatre — on  one  occasion  playing 
Lear  in  rivalry  with  his  former  competitor,  and,  at  the 
other  house,  on  the  eve  of  Kean's  departure  for  Amer- 
ica, joining  him  in  a  round  of  characters — the  indigni- 
ties heaped  upon  him  at  the  start  blighted  his  career 
in  his  native  land  and  led  to  his  self-expatriation. 
From  his  earliest  boyhood  the  right  of  every  people  to 
self-government  was  the  favored  topic  of  the  family 
hearth.  His  paternal  grandmother  was  a  relative  of 
Wilkes.  Richard  Booth,  his  father,  in  his  youth  ran 
away  from  home  to  solicit  from  Arthur  Lee,  the  agent 
of  the  rebellious  colonies  at  Paris,  a  commission  in 
their  army ;  a  picture  of  Washington  hung  on  the  par- 
lor wall,  to  which  every  spectator  was  expected  to  take 
off  his  hat.  He  named  one  son  Junius  Brutus  and 
another  Algernon  Sidney,  wrote  pamphlets  advocating 
manhood   suffrage   and  annual  parliaments,   thereby 


THE    PLOT    TO    CAPTURE  3 

incurring  an  unpopularity  which  seriously  interfered 
with  his  success  as  a  member  of  the  bar.  Bred  in  such 
a  home  atmosphere,  the  son  looked  forward  to  a  much 
more  enthusiastic  welcome  in  the  New  World,  where 
democratic  ideas  were  the  citizen's  daily  food,  than  he 
had  experienced  in  the  old  country,  where  they  were  as 
yet  so  largely  at  a  discount.  Accordingly,  shortly  after 
his  marriage,  which  was  solemnized  in  London  in 
January,  1821,  he  sailed  with  his  bride  for  America, 
stopping  for  several  weeks  in  Madeira  and  landing  at 
Norfolk  ou  the  last  day  of  June.* 

The  reception  he  met  with  must  have  exceeded  his 
most  sanguine  expectations.  From  his  very  first 
appearance  he  took  the  play-going  public  by  storm. 
As  the  impersonator  of  such  characters  as  Eichard  and 
Sir  Giles  Overreach,  he  was  pronounced  inimitable  by 
the  stars  of  the  stage,  and  among  the  votaries  of  the 
theatre  his  name  became  a  household  word.  His  act- 
ing of  Sir  Giles,  one  of  the  best  judges  states,  ''was 
something  to  be  remembered.  During  the  last  scene 
Booth's  face  .  .  .  had  a  look  of  an  uncaged  tiger.  His 
eyes  flashed  and  seemed  to  snap  with  fire;  his  nostrils 
dilated ;  his  cheeks  appeared  to  quiver;  his  half-opened 
mouth  with  its  thin  lips  pressed  tightly  against  the 
white  teeth,  made  a  picture  of  anger  fearful  to  look 
upon.  .  .  .  There  was  no  applause  the  night  I  speak 
of;  the  acting  was  so  intense  and  so  natural  that  the 
mimic  scene  seemed  really  to  have  happened."!     So 

*  See  Note  I  to  this  chapter  in  Appendix. 

t  *  *  Autobiography  of  Joseph  Jefferson, ' '  Century  Magazine  for  Jan- 
uary, 1890. 


4    ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

successful  was  lie  that  but  a  vear  after  his  arrival  he 
bought  a  farm  near  Belair,  about  twenty-five  miles 
northwest  of  Baltimore,  where  with  his  wife  and  infant 
child — born  in  Charleston  in  December — and  with  his 
father  whom  he  sent  for  from  London — in  a  log-cabin 
** plastered  and  whitewashed,"  "with  window  sashes 
and  shutters  and  doors  painted  red,"  standing  in  a 
clearing  of  the  forest,  he  set  up  his  household  gods. 
Here  all  his  other  children — nine  in  number — were 
born.  He,  himself,  led  the  wandering  life  incident  to 
his  profession;  acting  in  all  the  principal  cities  and 
towns,  always  to  enraptured  audiences.  Twice  he 
visited  England — once  in  1825  and  again  in  1837-8 — 
taking  his  family  with  him.  During  his  last  ten  years 
he  spent  a  considerable  portion  of  his  time  at  home — at 
his  residence  in  Baltimore  in  the  winter  and  at  his 
woodland  farm  in  the  summer.  In  the  spring  of  1852 
he  went  to  California,  his  son  Edwin,  whom  he  took 
with  him,  playing  as  his  support  in  San  Francisco  and 
Sacramento ;  and  he  returned  alone  overland  through 
Mexico  to  New  Orleans,  in  which  city  he  made  his  last 
appearance  in  November.  Taking  passage  thence  in  a 
steamboat  bound  for  Cincinnati,  he  died  on  the  voyage 
the  last  day  of  that  month,  aged  fifty-six  years. 

His  career,  however,  so  bright  from  a  professional 
point  of  view,  was  marred  by  personal  eccentricities 
that  at  times  passed  the  bounds  of  sanity.  Even  in  his 
youth,  says  his  daughter,  ''we  occasionally  trace  those 
slight  aberrations  of  mind  which  mark  that  exquisite 
turning-point  between  genius  and  madness"  and  which 
''seemed  to  increase  in  strength  and  frequency  with 


THE   PLOT    TO   CAPTURE  5 

maturer  years."  His  most  pressing  engagements 
were  at  the  mercy  of  these  periodical  attacks.  He 
would  disappear  suddenly,  leaving  the  manager  and 
his  fellow-actors  in  the  lurch,  and  be  found  wandering 
in  remote  streets,  or  in  the  woods,  or  amid  snow  and 
ice.  Again,  he  would  demean  himself  so  strangely  that 
the  members  of  the  company  were  afraid  to  play  with 
him  and  the  manager  had  no  alternative  but  to  bar  him 
from  the  stage.  Once,  in  the  last  scene  of  Richard  III, 
seized  with  an  irrational  aversion  to  the  actor  person- 
ating Richmond,  he  refused  to  succumb,  keeping  up  the 
fight  furiously  in  earnest  until  driven  off  the  scene  by 
the  superior  skill  of  his  adversary.  Sailing  south  in 
1838,  when  nearing  the  spot  where  the  elder  Conway 
jumped  overboard,  he  rushed  up  on  deck  and,  ex- 
claiming, *'I  have  a  message  for  Conway,"  threw 
himself  into  the  sea  and  was  rescued  with  difficulty. 
If  he  were  anywhere  within  reach  of  his  family  when 
he  felt  the  oncoming  horror,  he  would  make  for  home 
where  his  faithful  wife  would  nurse  him  through  his 
period  of  torture.  So  far  from  these  attacks  being 
caused  by  prolonged  dissipation,  to  which  they  were 
often  attributed,  his  daughter  affirms  that  in  the  house- 
hold they  were  looked  upon  ''with  awe  and  reverence" ; 
on  one  occasion  the  loss  of  two  children,  one  close  after 
the  other,  so  prostrated  the  absent  father  as  to  cut 
short  a  pending  engagement  and  lead  him  at  the 
moment  to  forswear  the  stage.  Many  were  ''the  singu- 
lar phases"  this  besetting  affliction  assumed.  He  was 
a  rigid  vegetarian,  holding  all  animal  life  sacred.  On 
his  farm  the  killing  of  any  member  of  the  brute  crea- 


6     ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

tion,  ''from  the  partridge  to  the  black  snake  and  wild 
boar,"  was  sedulously  interdicted.  Once  upon  a  time, 
when  playing  in  a  western  town,  he  sent  a  note  to  a 
clergyman  inquiring  where  he  could  buy  a  lot  in  which 
to  inter  some  friends  recently  deceased.  The  clergy- 
man, as  he  himself  relates,  called  on  the  actor  who, 
after  entrancing  his  auditor  by  reading  Coleridge's 
Ancient  Mariner,  Byron's  epitaph  on  his  dog  and 
Shelley's  note  to  Queen  Mab  against  the  use  of  animal 
food,  inquired:  ''Would  you  like  to  look  at  the 
remains?"  and  leading  him  into  the  next  room,  knelt 
down  and  moaned  over  a  bushelful  of  wild  pigeons  wel- 
tering in  their  blood.  At  the  moment  the  astonished 
man  of  God  suspected  he  was  being  made  fun  of ;  but 
he  subsequently  learned  that  the  grief  he  witnessed 
was  genuine  indeed,  the  mourner  buying  a  lot  and,  with 
cofiSn,  hearse  and  funeral,  burying  the  birds.*  Though 
a  devout  man  he  was  singularly  indiscriminate  in  his 
choice  of  creeds.  He  read  and  admired  the  Koran; 
texts  from  the  Old  Testament  were  at  his  tongue's  end; 
in  the  synagogue,  joining  in  the  worship,  as  he  was 
able  to  do,  in  Hebrew,  he  was  taken  for  a  Jew ;  because 
of  his  advocacy  of  their  more  distinctive  tenets  the 
Catholics  claimed  him  for  their  own;  and  he  was  a  fre- 
quent and  a  praying  attendant  at  a  floating  "Sailor's 
Bethel,  "t 

Of  this  wayward  genius,  John  Wilkes  Booth  was 
the  "well-beloved,  bright  boy  Absalom."  He  was  but 
thirteen  years  of  age  on  the  death  of  his  father,  and  his 

•  Atlantic  Monthly,  September,  1861 ;  quoted  in  Life. 
t  See  Life,  cited  in  Note  I,  Appendix. 


THE    PLOT    TO    CAPTURE  7 

two  elder  brothers  had  long  since  deserted  the  paternal 
nest  in  the  heart  of  the  forest  for  their  father's  profes- 
sion, a  fondness  and  adaptability  for  which  all  the 
cliildren  of  whom  we  have  any  information  appear  to 
have  inherited.  Edwin  relates  that  he  "seldom  saw 
him  since  earlv  bovhood"  when  he  was  considered  a 
''good-hearted,  harmless,  wild-brained  boy" — "a  rat- 
tlepated  fellow,  full  of  quixotic  notions";  he  ''would 
charge  on  horseback  through  the  woods  on  the  Mary- 
land farm,  spouting  heroic  speeches,  with  a  lance  given 
father  hy  one  of  Taylor's  soldiers."*  For  four  years 
he  clung  to  his  widowed  mother  whom  he  devotedly 
loved,  and  then  he  followed  his  brothers  into  the  outer 
world — serving  his  apprenticeship  with  John  S.  Clarke 
who  married  his  sister  and  conducted  a  theatre  in 
Philadelphia.  The  Jolin  Brown  raid  occurred  while 
he  was  playing  an  engagement  at  Richmond,  and  he 
instantly  shouldered  a  musket,  marched  to  the  scene 
of  hostilities,  stood  guard  around  the  scatf  old  when  the 
old  man  was  hung,  and  remained  with  his  regiment  un- 
til the  last  of  the  raiders  expiated  their  common  offence. 
This  self-devotion  to  avenge  the  desecrated  soil  of  the 
Old  Dominion  secured  for  the  actor  on  his  reappear- 
ance a  welcome  from  the  slaveholding  section  so  enthu- 
siastic as  to  disarm  criticism  and  originate  the  saying 
that  while  Junius  Brutus  held  the  extreme  West  and 
Edwin  the  North,  Wilkes  held  the  South  for  his  posses- 
sion. The  commencement  of  the  Civil  "War,  however, 
shut  him  out  of  the  limits  of  the  new  born  Confederacy^ 
confining  his  engagements  to  the  theatres  at  Baltimore 

*  Ee collections  of  Edwin  Booth   (N.  Y.  Century  Co.),  p.  227. 


8    ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

and  Washington,  varied  by  an  occasional  tour  in  a 
Northern  state;  so  that  in  the  winter  of  1863-4,  dis- 
satisfied with  liis  professional  prospects,  he  put  six 
thousand  dollars  of  the  money  he  had  amassed  into  oil 
lands  in  western  Pennsylvania  and  employed  an  agent 
to  look  after  his  interest  on  the  spot,  while  he  himself 
passed  the  summer,  now  at  home  with  his  mother,  now 
visiting  the  oil  works  (acting  on  the  journeys  where 
opportunity  offered),  and  now  stajdng  with  his  broth- 
ers in  New  York:  Junius,  at  present,  sojourning  in 
that  city  and  Edwin  having  undertaken  the  manage- 
ment of  the  "Winter  Garden  theatre.* 

At  this  date  Booth  was  but  twenty-five  years  old.  As 
described  by  one  who  knew  him  from  boyhood,  he  was 
above  the  ordinary  height,  in  form  very  graceful,  in 
face  remarkably  handsome,  with  glossy  black  hair, 
moustache  but  no  whiskers,  complexion  rather  dark 
but  pallid,  hands  noticeably  large  and  white.  Bold  and 
fearless,  one  of  the  best  gymnasts  in  the  country,  an 
excellent  swordsman  and  noted  for  his  extraordinary 
leaps  on  the  stage;  in  manner  peculiarly  fascinating, 
very  interesting  in  conversation,  careful  in  dress  and 
clean  in  person.f  Gifted  with  a  special  aptitude  for 
command,  he  possessed  a  rare  power  of  attracting 
to  himself  persons  of  inferior  station.  The  absence 
of  all  mental  discipline,  save  that  to  which  he  was 
necessarily  subjected  in  the  practice  of  his  art,  gave 
full  play  to   an   inherited  predisposition,    especially 

*  Note  II  in  Appendix  as  to  alleged  Poison  Plot,  C.  T.,  Testimony 
of  Symonds,  Poore,  Vol.  I,  39;   E.  Booth's  Rec,  sup. 

t  C.  T.,  Poore,  Vol.  II,  527,  531-2;  S.  T.,  547,  testimony  of  J.  T.  Ford. 


THE    PLOT    TO    CAPTURE  9 

when  the  course  of  affairs  did  not  run  smooth,  to  fall 
into  fits  of  the  blackest  melancholy  or  sullen  rage. 
Having  an  overweening  conceit  of  his  own  abilities  he 
waxed  impatient  under  opposition  and  domineering 
towards  suspected  rivals;  and  in  these  moods  was  liable 
to  break  out  in  some  deed  of  startling  eccentricity. 

His  origin,  temperament,  bringing-up  and  earlier 
associations  being  what  they  were,  it  was  a  matter  of 
course  that  he  threw  his  whole  soul  into  the  Southern 
cause.  His  own  state,  at  the  recent  presidential  elec- 
tion, out  of  a  total  vote  of  92,500,  cast  but  2,300  for  the 
Lincoln  ticket  and  would  have  followed  Virginia  had 
not  the  Potomac  flowed  between  and  the  capitol  pinned 
her  to  the  Union  with  a  ponderosity  against  which  an 
ordinance  of  secession,  however  valid  as  matter  of 
law,  was  a  nullity  as  a  matter  of  fact.  Through  the 
streets  of  Baltimore  and  Washington,  on  their  way  to 
battle  against  the  soldiers  of  secession,  marched  the 
soldiers  of  the  Union  to  the  strains  of  the  "Star 
Spangled  Banner";  while  along  the  sidewalks  saun- 
tered the  pseudo-secessionist  humming  to  himself 
"The  despot's  heel  is  on  thy  shore,  Maryland,  my 
Maryland,"  and  revolving  in  his  heated  brain  some 
signal  stroke  which  peradventure  might  call  back  the 
on-rushing  dogs  of  war. 

Of  such  home-staying  champions.  Booth  was  an  ex- 
treme specimen.  Some  thought  him  insane  on  the  one 
absorbing  topic.  He  warned  his  brother  that  Lincoln, 
if  reelected,  would  become  "King  of  America."  He 
was  deterred,  so  he  said,  from  joining  the  Confederacy 
only  by  a  promise  made  to  his  mother  "to  keep  out  of 


10  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

the  quarrel,"  the  one  thing  he  could  not  do.  For  the 
first  two  years,  indeed,  the  victorious  Confederacy 
needed  no  help  from  him.  His  impatient  spirit  could 
exult  over  the  rout  at  Bull  Run,  the  slaughter  before 
Fredericksburg  and  the  discomfiture  at  Chancellors- 
ville.  But  Gettysburg  filled  the  horizon  of  his  hopes 
with  blackness,  and  the  gathering  of  Grant's  mighty 
host  for  the  final  onset  seemed  to  his  distracted  soul  a 
personal  challenge  to  the  field.  The  people  who  had  wel- 
comed him  with  open  arms  were  being  slowly  crushed 
to  earth.  The  theatres — all  were  closed ;  the  auditorium 
empty ;  the  curtain  down ;  his  former  patrons  treading 
the  stage  where  the  fighting,  the  carnage  and  the  death 
struggle  were  only  too  real.  His  mimic  "occupation" 
was  ''gone"  indeed.  Some  part  in  the  tremendous 
tragedy  he  felt  he  must  play.  The  unobtrusive  role  of 
a  common  soldier  seemed  miserably  inadequate  to  his 
dream  of  glory.  The  canine  appetite  for  distinction 
born  in  him  and  fed  by  the  study  of  the  heroes  of  the 
melodrama,  nothing  could  appease  short  of  some  deed 
of  unexampled  daring  that  would  signalize  his  entrance 
and  his  exit  for  all  coming  time.  At  the  culminat- 
ing moment  he  must  fill  the  entire  stage.  Upon  him 
alone  must  centre  the  wonder  of  contemporaries  and 
the  plaudits  of  posterity.  As  was  well  said  of  him,  he 
*' aspired  to  be  the  Brutus  in  real  life  that  he  had  been 
and  seen  on  the  boards."* 

Grant's  order  of  April,  1864,  that  not  another  Con- 
federate prisoner  should  be  exchanged  sounded  the  call 
for  which  the  actor  was  languishing  in  the  side-scenes. 

*  Argument  of  W.  S,  Cox  in  C.  T.,  Pitman,  339, 


THE    PLOT    TO    CAPTUEE  11 

The  Confederacy  was  in  sore  need  of  soldiers.  The 
Northern  prisons  were  overcrowded — more  than  23,- 
000  able-bodied  men  wasting  their  strength  away  in 
confinement,  while  Union  soldiers  in  Libby,  at  Belle 
Isle  and  Andersonville  were  starving  because  of  the 
inability  of  the  proper  authorities  to  furnish  sufficient 
food.  In  vain  did  the  insurgent  government  yield 
every  question  in  dispute.  Grant  was  not  to  be  moved : 
"If  we  liberate  all  prisoners,"  he  declared,  ''we'll  have 
to  fight  until  the  South  is  exterminated. "  ' '  If  we  hold 
those  caught  they  are  no  more  than  dead  men."  ''It 
is  hard  on  our  men,  but  it  is  humanity  to  those  left  in 
the  ranks,  "t  To  free  the  captives  expedition  after  expe- 
dition had  been  organized  by  the  Confederate  agents 
in  Canada,  but  without  success.  Here  was  a  Gordian 
knot  fit  for  a  stage  Alexander  to  cut  asunder  with  the 
sword.  To  seize  the  commander-in-chief  of  the  armies 
of  the  North,  carry  him  across  the  Potomac  and  deliver 
him  over  to  the  Confederates  would  at  once  repeal  the 
iron-bound  order,  throw  open  the  prison  doors,  pour 
new  life  into  a  failing  cause,  bring  about  a  cessation  of 
hostilities  and,  eventually  perhaps,  peace  with  honor. 
This  project,  mad  though  it  essentially  was,  combined 
the  three  conditions  calculated  to  appeal  most  power- 
fully to  the  eccentric  temperament  of  its  deviser.  It 
was  melodramatic  in  the  highest  degree ;  in  its  execu- 
tion he  would  stand  the  one  central  figure ;  and,  to  an 
imagination  steeped  in  the  atmosphere  of  the  theatre 
it  was  certain  of  success.  From  the  point  of  view  of 
this  dainty  athlete  of  the  stage,  the  Railsplitter  of  the 

t  Rhodes '  History  of  the  United  States,  Vol.  V,  320,  485-7,  499,  50C. 


12  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

West  would  be  an  easy  victim.  His  uncouth  aspect, 
his  awkward  movements,  his  story-telling  habit  shocked 
the  actor's  ideal  of  a  ruler  of  men.  His  midnight  flight 
through  Baltimore  in  disguise,  his  ever-present  care 
for  the  safety  of  the  capital,  his  summons  to  the  slaves 
to  rise  for  their  freedom  were  so  many  proofs  that  he 
would  submit  quietly  to  be  kidnapped.  Indeed,  so  un- 
bounded was  the  assurance  of  this  bold  spirit  in  the 
feasibility  of  his  scheme  that  at  one  step  in  its  progress 
he  did  not  hesitate  to  include  the  Secretary  of  State, 
the  Secretary  of  War  and  the  General  of  the  Army  as 
a  supernumerary  group  about  the  principal  captive. 

Without  delay  he  began  to  prepare  for  action.  As 
early  as  August,  1864,  he  enlisted  his  first  recruits, 
two  former  schoolmates  of  his — Samuel  Arnold  and 
Michael  O'Laughlin — ^who  having  served  two  years  in 
the  Confederate  army,  had  just  returned  to  their  re- 
spective homes  in  Baltimore,  and  were  "engaged"  to 
undertake  "the  enterprise."*  He  then  went  to  the  oil 
regions,  divested  himself  of  his  holdings  there  and 
departed  for  Canada,  reaching  Montreal  early  in 
October.  Here  he  was  at  the  headquarters  of  the  Con- 
federate agents  whose  mission  it  was,  with  bands 
composed  of  escaped  Confederate  prisoners,  refugees 
from  the  seceded  states  and  volunteers  from  all  quar- 
ters, to  wage  an  irregular  warfare  along  the  border. 
Jacob  Thompson  of  Mississippi,  Secretary  of  the  In- 
terior in  President  Buchanan's  cabinet,  and  Clement 
C.  Clay,  Jr.,  a  senator  of  the  United  States  from  Ala- 

*See  Note  III  in  Appendix,  and  C.  T.,  Poore,  Vol.  II,  147,  225; 
Pitman,  223,  236-240. 


THE   PLOT    TO    CAPTUEE  13 

bama  at  the  time  of  the  secession  of  that  state,  were  the 
chiefs  in  authority,  recognized  and  supported  by  the 
government  at  Richmond,  under  whom  were  gathered 
such  men  as  Beverly  Tucker  of  Virginia  and  George  N. 
Sanders  of  New  York.  At  the  time  of  Booth's  arrival, 
this  coterie  was  absorbed  in  calculating  the  chances  of 
Lincoln's  reelection  and  counting  the  cost  of  the  St. 
Alban's  raid;  and  it  is  likely  that,  to  some  of  its  mem- 
bers, he  outlined  his  grand  design,  though  there  is  no 
reliable  evidence  that  he  met  either  Thompson  or  Clay, 
both  of  whom  subsequently  disclaimed  any  acquaint- 
ance with  him  or  his  plot.  His  enterprise  involved  no 
breach  of  the  law  of  nations,  was  as  legitimate  under 
the  rules  of  war  as  those  in  which  these  agents  were 
engaged,  and  needed  no  special  sanction  from  the 
Richmond  authorities.*  But  the  probability  is  that 
these  experienced  revolutionists  far  away  from  the 
proposed  scene  of  action,  if  they  were  consulted  at  all, 
regarded  the  scheme  as  too  wild  and  impracticable; 
and  the  enthusiastic  projector  was  obliged  to  content 
himself  with  a  vague  promise  to  apprise  the  Confeder- 
ate authorities  of  its  pendency  and  with  good  wishes 
for  its  success.  Be  this  as  it  may,  Booth  soon  came  to 
the  conclusion  that  Canada  was  no  place  for  him.  On 
the  twenty- seventh  of  October  he  bought  of  the  Ontario 
Bank  of  Montreal  a  bill  of  exchange  (in  triplicate), 
drawn  on  the  bank's  London  agents,  payable  to  his 
order,  for  sixty-one  pounds;  for  which  he  paid  three 
hundred  dollars  in  gold,  remarking  that  he  was  going 
to  run  the  blockade  and  wanted  to  make  sure  that  in 

'Argument  of  Cox,  Pitman,  342. 


14  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

the  event  of  his  being  taken  prisoner  his  captors  could 
not  use  the  money.  He  also  opened  an  account  by 
depositing  five  hundred  and  fifty  dollars  and  taking 
out  a  bank  book.  From  an  acquaintance  by  the  name 
of  Martin,  a  former  resident  of  lower  Maryland,  he 
got  letters  of  introduction  to  parties  in  that  quarter, 
and,  armed  with  these,  his  bill  of  exchange  and  his  bank 
book  he  shook  the  dust  of  the  indifferent  city  from  the 
soles  of  his  feet  and  struck  for  home  overland.*  Hav- 
ing entered  into  a  previous  engagement  with  his  two 
brothers  to  play  with  them  in  Julius  Caesar  for  the 
benefit  of  a  fund  being  raised  for  a  statue  of  Shakes- 
peare to  stand  in  Central  Park,  he  stopped  on  his  way 
at  the  city  of  New  York  to  fix  the  date  for  the  twenty- 
fifth  of  November,  and  reached  home  on  the  eighth 
(election  day),  in  time  to  vote  against  the  candidate, 
whose  defeat  would  have  stayed  the  pursuit  of  his  fell 
purpose.t  The  next  morning  he  hears  that  even  Mary- 
land had  gone  to  swell  the  triumph  of  the  victor,  and 
filled  with  chagrin  he  starts  for  "Washington,  arriving 
at  his  usual  quarters  in  the  National  Hotel  in  the 
evening,  t 

At  the  capital  he  was  as  much  at  home  as  in  the  city 
of  his  residence.  With  the  two  principal  theatres — 
every  entrance  and  exit,  front  or  back,  every  passage- 
way behind  the  curtain  and  under  the  stage — he  Was 
familiar,  and  to  him  the  stock-actors  and  employees 
were  well  known.  Especially  was  this  the  case  at  Ford 's, 

*C.  T.,  Poore,  Vol.  II,  87;  Vol.  I,  44. 

t  Eecollections  of  Edwin  Booth,  sup.,  153,  154. 

i  Bunker 's  Memorandum,  Poors,  Vol.  I,  32,  and  Appendix,  Note  IV. 


THE    PLOT    TO    CAPTURE  15 

owned  by  liis  friend  from  boyhood,  who  owned  also  and 
managed  a  similar  establishment  in  Baltimore ;  one  of 
his  brothers  being  the  business  manager  and  another 
the  treasurer  of  the  Washington  theatre.  Here  Booth 
when  in  the  city  was  in  the  habit  of  resorting  at  all 
hours,  having  the  run  of  the  house ;  and  here  his  letters 
were  addressed.  The  thoroughness  of  his  acquaint- 
ance with  the  building  and  the  exceptional  privileges 
he  enjoyed  led  him  at  first  to  fix  upon  a  crowded  house 
as  the  scene  of  the  capture,  rather  than  the  highways 
of  the  suburbs  where,  in  comparison,  capture  was  easy 
and  not  without  precedent.  If  he  struck  at  all,  he 
would  boast  that  he  '' struck  boldly";  if  he  "walked 
with  a  firm  step"  it  must  be  '^ through  a  thousand  of 
the  friends"  of  his  victim.  The  performance  must  be 
"actable"  and  he  "the  one  hero  of  the  act."*  Either 
modus  operandi  required  the  purchase  of  horses  to 
mount  his  troop  and  the  selection  of  the  route  to  the 
river,  and  to  these  preliminaries  he  hastened  to  address 
himself.  On  Saturday,  the  nineteenth  of  November, 
we  find  him  at  Bryantown,  a  village  on  the  stage  road 
from  Washington  through  lower  Maryland,  thirty 
miles  from  the  capital,  distant  on  one  side  ten  miles 
from  the  Patuxent  river  and  on  the  other  about  fifteen 
miles  from  Pope's  Creek  on  the  Potomac  opposite 
Matthews '  Point  on  the  Virginia  shore — the  site  of  the 
principal  ferry  on  the  underground  route  to  and  from 
Richmond.  In  the  dusk  of  the  evening  he  comes  to  the 
house  of  Dr.  Queen — guided  by  the  doctor's  son — to 
whom  he  carries  a  letter  of  introduction  from  Martin 

*  Booth 's  diary ;  Katy  of  Catoctin,  475,  479. 


16  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABKAHAM  LINCOLN 

in  Montreal,  and  with  whom  the  next  morning  he  goes 
to  church.  Before  the  service  he  is  introduced  among 
others  to  Samuel  A.  Mudd,  another  physician  of  the 
neighborhood,  in  whose  company  the  next  day  he  buys 
from  a  neighbor  a  dark  bay  saddle  horse,  old  and  blind 
of  one  eye — a  steed  destined  in  the  course  of  events  to 
carrv  the  mad  assailant  of  Seward.* 

This,  as  all  the  circumstances  show,  was  Booth's  first 
visit  to  Charles  county,  and  made,  not  by  way  of  the 
road  leading  from  Washington,  but  from  Baltimore  by 
wav  of  the  Patuxent.  All  the  well-to-do  residents, 
slaveholders  at  the  beginning  of  the  war,  sympathized 
with  the  Southern  cause;  but,  at  the  date  we  have 
reached,  there  was  quite  a  sprinkling  among  the  voters 
of  men  who  foresaw  the  downfall  of  the  Confederacy 
and  were  preparing  to  submit  to  the  inevitable  with  no 
very  poignant  regrets.  Among  them  the  stranger  was 
obliged  to  conceal  his  real  object  by  talk  of  investing 
in  lands  and  horses.  "With  his  letters  of  introduction 
he  found  no  difficulty  in  gaining  information  about  cer- 
tain subjects;  for  example,  the  roads  leading  to  the 
Potomac,  some  of  them  provided  with  gates  that  could 
be  left  open  to  fugitives  and  closed  against  pursuers, 
the  stations  for  relays  on  the  underground  route,  the 
ferries  and,  particularly,  the  old  town  of  Port  Tobacco, 
lying  six  miles  up  a  broad  inlet  of  that  name — thirty- 
four  miles  from  Washington  on  a  direct  line  "as  the 
crow  flies"  from  the  city  of  Baltimore  to  the  city  of 

*  Testimony  on  C.  T.  of  Bowman,  Poore,  II,  334 ;  Dyer,  id.,  332,  Pit- 
man, 180;  of  Thompson.  Poore,  II,  268,  Pitman,  178;  of  Gardner,  Poore, 
I,  361;  Swing's  argument,  Pitman,  319. 


THE    PLOT    TO    CAPTURE  17 

Washington,  as  directly  south  as  the  plummet  could 
hang — to  be  reached  from  the  capital  in  six  or  seven 
hours'  rapid  riding.*  To  Dr.  Mudd,  an  original  South- 
ern sjTupathizer  but  who  at  the  recent  election  had 
voted  for  the  Union  candidate  for  Congress,  it  is  not 
likely  that  Booth  confided  the  real  object  of  his  jour- 
ney; their  intercourse  in  all  probability  amounting  to 
nothing  more  than  overtures  on  the  part  of  the  visitor 
to  purchase  lands  of  which  it  was  reported  the  doctor 
was  anxious  to  get  rid.  At  any  rate,  this  trip  must 
have  been  of  short  duration,  as  the  actor's  engagement 
to  play  in  New  York  constrained  him  to  hurry  away 
to  that  city,  where,  on  the  night  of  the  twenty-fifth,  the 
three  brothers  appeared  together — Edwin  as  Brutus, 
Junius  as  Cassius,  and  "Wilkes  as  Antonius.  While 
the  play  was  in  progress,  by  a  sinister  coincidence,  the 
Astor  House,  the  St.  Nicholas,  the  Metropolitan,  the 
Fifth  Avenue  and  several  other  hotels  were  set  afire  by 
drunken  incendiaries,  said  to  be  Confederate  agents, 
and  an  alarm  breaking  out  in  the  crowded  audience  at 
Winter  Garden,  it  was  only  by  the  presence  of  mind  of 
Edwin  and  two  officials  of  the  theatre  that  a  panic  was 
averted.f 

As  Booth  was  once  more  in  Washington  on  the 
twelfth  of  December,  it  must  have  been  during  this 
interval,  as  he  was  passing  through  Philadelphia,  that 
he  deposited  with  his  brother-in-law  for  safe  keeping  a 
sealed  envelope  containing  a  letter  written  in  the  style 

*  Katy  of  Catoctin,  468,  note,  366. 

t  Khodes,  sup.,  Vol.  V,  339;  Kennedy's  confession,  Poore,  II,  403 j 
Bern,  of  E.  Booth,  154;  N.  Y.  Herald  of  24,  25,  26  Nov.,  1864. 
2 


18  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

of  the  more  famous  diary,  to  vindicate  the  deed  he  was 
contemplating.  Dated  ''1864"  and  addressed:  ''My 
dear  Sir"  and  "(in  the  words  of  your  master)  'To 
whom  it  may  concern, '  "  it  opened  as  follows : 

"Right  or  wrong,  God  judge  me,  not  man.  For  four  years 
have  I  waited,  hoped  and  prayed  for  the  dark  clouds  to  break 
and  for  a  restoration  of  our  former  sunshine.  To  wait  longer 
would  be  a  crime.  All  hope  for  peace  is  dead.  My  prayers 
have  proved  as  idle  as  my  hopes.  God's  will  be  done;  I  go 
to  see  and  share  the  bitter  end ' ' ; 

and  it  closed : 

"My  love  (as  things  stand  to-day)  is  for  the  South  alone. 
Nor  do  I  deem  it  a  dishonor  in  attempting  to  make  for  her 
a  prisoner  of  this  man  to  whom  she  owes  so  much  of  misery. 
If  success  attend  me,  I  go  penniless  to  her  side.  They  say 
she  has  found  that  'last  ditch'  which  the  North  has  so  long 
derided  and  been  endeavoring  to  force  her  in,  forgetting  that 
they  are  our  brothers,  and  that  it's  impolitic  to  goad  an 
enemy  to  madness.  Should  I  reach  her  in  safety  and  find  it 
true,  I  will  proudly  beg  permission  to  triumph  or  die  in  that 
same  ditch  by  her  side.  A  confederate  doing  duty  on  his  own 
responsibility. '  '* 

He  stopped  at  the  National  Hotel  for  the  greater 
part  of  time  from  the  twelfth  until  Christmas  and  dur- 
ing the  month  of  January;  making  several  trips  into 
lower  Maryland  by  the  old  stage  road  over  which  a 
system  of  contraband  travel  and  traffic  had  been  estab- 
lished, and  consulting  the  parties  thus  engaged  in  giv- 
ing aid  and  comfort  to  the  enemy,  many  of  whom  at 

*  For  whole  paper,  see  Note  Y  in  Appendix. 


THE    PLOT    TO    CAPTURE  19 

this  period  were  aware  of  the  pendency  of  a  plot  to 
capture  the  President,  if  they  did  not  actually  offer 
their  services  to  its  chief.  It  was  in  December,  also, 
that  Booth  rented  a  stable  in  the  rear  of  Ford's  theatre, 
which  was  repaired  for  him  by  Edward  Spangler,  a 
scene  shifter  of  the  company,  who,  cherishing  an 
unbounded  admiration  for  the  actor,  was  glad  to  do 
him  menial  service;  into  which  stable  he  put  a  buggy 
and  two  horses,  one  of  them  the  one-eyed  animal  he 
had  bought  on  his  first  visit  to  Bryantown.* 

At  this  stage  of  the  plot  the  accession  of  a  fresK 
recruit  lent  renewed  vigor  to  its  progress.  On  the  road 
leading  from  Washington  to  Bryantown — ten  miles 
from  the  Navy  Yard  bridge — there  lived  at  the  out- 
break of  the  war  a  reputable  citizen  named  John  H. 
Surratt,  who  kept  a  tavern  and  farmed  the  adjoining 
land  at  a  place  called  after  himself  Surrattsville.  His 
wife — Mary  E. — was  a  daughter  of  Samuel  I.  Jenkins, 
a  man  of  substance  in  the  county ;  his  elder  son,  Isaac, 
was  in  Texas,  a  soldier  under  Magruder,  his  daughter, 
Anna  E.,  was  at  home  and  his  younger  son,  named  after 
him,  just  seventeen,!  was  at  St.  Charles's  College  near 
Ellicott's  Mills,  a  short  distance  west  of  Baltimore. 
The  father's  death  in  1862  called  the  young  student 
to  the  assistance  of  his  mother  in  the  management  of 
the  place  and  he  was  permitted  to  serve  as  his  father's 
successor  in  the  post  office  until  November  of  the  fol- 

*  Bunker's  Mem.,  Note  IV  in  Appendix;  C.  T.  (Pitman),  178,  179; 
Poore,  I,  225;  II,  104,  105,  528;  S.  T.,  258;  Pitman,  104;  Century, 
April,  1884,  ' '  How  Booth  crossed  the  Potomac. ' ' 

t  Born  April  13,  1844;  S.  T.,  893. 


20  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

lowing  year.*  Like  the  members  of  his  family  and  the 
majority  of  his  neighbors  he  favored  the  insurgents 
and  was  soon  drawn  into  active  participation  in  the 
clandestine  commerce  carried  on  between  the  capital 
of  the  Confederacy  and  the  capital  of  the  Union— 
''doing  some  hard  riding,"  as  he  stated,  in  public,  after 
the  war  was  over,  ''carrying  dispatches  in  the  heels  of 
his  boots  or  between  the  planks  of  his  buggy."  "It 
was  a  fascinating  life  for  me,"  he  said;  "it  seemed  as 
if  I  could  not  do  too  much  or  run  too  great  a  risk. '  'f 
In  October,  1864,  the  widow,  finding  that  she  could  no 
longer  keep  up  the  farm  and  tavern  with  profit,  leased 
them  to  an  ex-policeman  of  the  capital  by  the  name  of 
Lloyd  and  moved  to  Washington,  opening  a  boarding 
house  on  H  Street  between  Sixth  and  Seventh,  and 
leaving  her  son  in  charge  at  Surrattsville  until  the  first 
of  December,  when  the  tenant  was  to  take  possession. 
This  venture  promised  well  from  the  first.  She  enjoyed 
a  rather  wide  circle  of  acquaintances  of  the  same  reli- 
gious faith  with  herself  in  the  city,  including  several 
priests,  who  interested  themselves  in  her  behalf.  The 
seven  bedrooms  were  soon  filled  with  boarders,  among 
them  one  whose  entry,  though  greeted  with  smiles  of 
welcome,  was  really  the  herald  of  desolation  to  the 
household.  Louis  J.  Wiechmann,  at  the  college  where 
he  was  studying  for  the  priesthood  had  been  the  chum 
of  John  Surratt  from  the  fall  of  1859  until  July,  1862, 
when  they  left  the  institution  together— Wiechmann  to 

*  Baker's  History  of  Secret  Service,  560. 

t  Surratt 's  lecture  at  Eoekville,  Md.,  printed  in  Washington  Evening 
Star,  Dec.  8,  1870;  reprinted,  April  12,  1908. 


THE    PLOT    TO    CAPTURE  21 

be  employed  as  a  teacher  in  the  capital  until  he 
obtained  a  position  under  the  government  as  a  clerk  in 
the  office  of  the  commissary-general  of  prisoners.  He 
visited  his  fellow-student  at  Surrattsville  in  the  spring 
and  summer  of  1863,  making  the  acquaintance  of  the 
mother  and  sister ;  and,  as  soon  as  he  was  apprised  of 
the  removal  of  the  family  to  Washington  he  sought  to 
become  a  boarder  and  was  assigned  to  the  second-story 
back  room,  which,  on  the  arrival  of  his  bosom  friend, 
he  was  to  share  with  him — both  to  sleep  in  the  same 
bed.  In  fact,  so  close  was  their  intimacy  that,  what- 
ever degree  of  reticence  the  government  clerk  may 
have  thought  proper  to  observe,  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  the  rider  of  the  underground  route  made  no  con- 
cealment of  his  sentiments  on  the  absorbing  topic  of 
the  hour.*  Surratt  was  not  yet  of  age  when  he  bade 
good-bye  to  his  birthplace  and  moved  to  Washington, 
bent  apparently  on  obtaining  steady  employment, 
necessitating  the  abandonment  to  a  great  degree  of  any 
further  dealings  with  the  enemy.  Booth,  it  is  certain, 
had  not  yet  met  him ;  the  actor  on  his  visits  to  Charles 
county  not  passing  through  Surrattsville  until  after 
the  beginning  of  the  tenancy  of  Lloyd.  Still,  in  the 
course  of  his  investigations  he  must  have  heard  of  the 
young  scout  and  his  change  of  residence  and  would  lose 
no  time  in  putting  himself  in.  touch  with  so  congenial 
an  associate.    Accordingly,  meeting  Dr.  Mudd  on  the 

*  Surratt,  as  described  by  his  friend,  was  six  feet  in  height,  with  light- 
colored  hair,  eyes  sunken  under  a  very  prominent  forehead,  a  very  large 
nose,  without  beard  except  a  slight  tuft  on  the  chin,  slender,  but  power- 
fully built.     Wiechmann,  Poore,  I,  91,  C.  T. 


22  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

evening  of  the  twenty-third  of  December  in  the  streets 
of  Washington,  he  pressed  the  latter  for  an  introduc- 
tion, and  while  on  their  way  to  the  house  in  H  Street, 
they  happened  to  encounter  Surratt  in  company  with 
Wiechmann.  At  the  actor's  invitation,  the  party  of 
four  betook  themselves  to  his  room  at  the  National, 
where,  after  regaling  themselves  in  the  customary  man- 
ner and  spending  some  time  in  conversing  ostensibly 
about  the  purchase  of  Mudd's  farm,  they  adjourned  to 
the  hotel  where  Mudd  was  stopping  and,  after  further 
talk,  separated — Booth  going  away  by  himself,  and 
Surratt  and  Wiechmann  together.  This,  it  is  agreed 
on  all  sides,  was  the  first  meeting  of  the  two  men  who 
became  the  leading  spirits  of  the  plot  to  capture ;  but 
on  this  occasion  it  is  not  at  all  likely  that  the  project 
was  broached  between  them,  Wiechmann 's  suspicions 
after  the  event,  more  particularly  concerning  Mudd's 
complicity,  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding.  The  doc- 
tor returned  home  the  next  morning,  not  to  see  the 
would-be  buyer  of  his  farm  again  until  nearly  four 
months  hence  when,  in  the  early  dawn,  a  fugitive  in  dis- 
guise and  with  a  broken  leg  was  lifted  from  his  horse 
at  the  doctor's  door.  Surratt,  as  if  nothing  out  of  the 
usual  course  had  taken  place,  applied  for  a  position  in 
the  freight  department  of  the  Adams  Express  Com- 
pany and  on  the  thirtieth  entered  upon  the  discharge 
of  his  duties.  Booth  went  to  spend  Christmas  with  his 
mother  and  thence  to  the  city  of  New  York,  not  return- 
ing until  the  last  day  of  the  year.* 

*  See  Gen.  Ewing's  argument  in  Pitman  and  evidence  therein  cited. 


THE    PLOT    TO    CAPTURE  23 

While  in  that  city,  he  sounded  an  intimate  friend  of 
his — Samuel  K.  Chester,  a  member  of  the  stock-com- 
pany playing  at  Winter  Garden,  "a  bold  resolute  fel- 
low"— on  the  latter 's  willingness  to  join  in  the  grand 
scheme  he  had  in  mind.  Previously,  when  on  his  way 
back  from  Canada  and  again  when  he  came  to  fill  his 
engagement  with  his  brothers,  he  had  thrown  out  hints 
of  a  big  speculation  in  hand,  a  share  in  which  he  offered 
to  his  fellow-actor;  but  now  he  disclosed  for  the  first 
time  the  real  nature  of  the  performance  he  designed 
should  take  place  at  Ford's  theatre.  Not  only  the 
President  but  heads  of  the  departments  were  to  be 
seized  in  the  private  box  they  occupied  and  hustled 
across  the  stage  to  the  rear ;  and  he  wanted  a  man  of 
nerve  who  was  familiar  with  the  premises  to  open  the 
back  door  at  a  given  signal.  Chester  recoiled  in  dismay, 
pleading  his  poverty  and  his  duty  to  wife  and  children ; 
but  the  tempter  would  listen  to  no  such  excuses: 
** there  was  plenty  of  money  in  the  affair;  fifty  persons 
were  in  it ;  it  was  sure  to  succeed ;  refusal  on  his  part 
he  would  regard  as  betrayal."  Still,  Chester,  as  he  tes- 
tifies, turned  a  deaf  ear  to  both  threats  and  entreaties ; 
but  nevertheless  Booth,  on  his  return  to  Washing- 
ton, kept  on  plying  him  with  letters  and  at  the  same 
time  urging  Ford  to  lure  him  to  the  capital  by  the  offer 
of  an  engagement.* 

In  dealing  with  Surratt,  his  success  was  much  less 
equivocal.  New  Year's  Day,  1865,  fell  on  a  Sunday, 
and  this  celebrated  hero  of  the  stage,  calling  at  the 
residence  of  his  recent  acquaintance,  met  with  a  cor- 

*  Chester  in  Poore,  I,  43  et  seq.;  Ford  in  Imp.  Inv.  (1867),  535. 


24  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABEAHAM  LINCOLN 

dial  reception  from  tlie  ladies  of  the  household.  The 
moment  he  could  obtain  a  private  inter\dew  he  hastened 
to  unfold  the  full  scope  of  his  design  to  the  son  and  in 
the  name  of  their  common  allegiance  to  the  struggling 
Confederacy  invoke  his  cooperation.  Far  from  exhib- 
iting any  of  the  scruples  of  Chester,  Surratt  welcomed 
the  project  with  the  utmost  ardor;  proposing  on  the 
instant  to  devote  the  hours  of  the  next  day  (usually 
kept  as  a  holiday)  to  a  reconnoisance  into  lower  Mary- 
land— an  adventure  baulked,  as  it  appears,  by  the 
refusal  of  the  express  company  on  account  of  rush  of 
business,  to  give  him  leave  of  absence.*  But  no  em- 
ployment so  prosaic  as  marking  packages  for  transpor- 
tation at  fifty  dollars  per  month  could  be  allowed  to 
interfere  with  the  glory  of  ending  the  war  at  a  single 
stroke.  His  knowledge  of  the  territory  over  which  the 
intended  captive  must  pass,  with  its  relay  stations,  of 
the  ferries  across  the  Potomac,  the  haunts  and  habits  of 
the  secret  agents  of  the  underground  route,  was  placed 
at  the  disposition  of  his  chief,  as  well  as  the  horses  he 
Iiad  brought  from  the  country  and  the  credit  he  appears 
to  have  established  at  the  principal  livery  stables  in 
the  capital.  In  addition  to  this  invaluable  aid  in  gen- 
eral, he  was  able  to  enlist  just  that  class  of  recruits 
suited  to  the  peculiar  exigencies  of  the  enterprise  and, 
by  temperament,  disposition  and  station,  most  liable 
to  succumb  to  the  personal  magnetism  of  the  master. 
Among  these  were  David  E.  Herold  and  George  A. 
Atzerodt — both  added  to  the  band  by  Surratt  almost 
immediately  after  his  own  adhesion.     Herold  was  a 

*  S.  T.,  338,  402,  414. 


THE    PLOT    TO    CAPTUEE  25 

youth  of  about  twenty  years,  living  with  his  widowed 
mother  and  seven  sisters  near  the  Navy  Yard  bridge ; 
recently  employed  as  a  clerk  in  a  drug  store  in  that 
neighborhood,  but  at  present  out  of  work,  sauntering 
about  the  streets  of  Washington  by  day  and  haunting 
the  theatre  by  night.  He  had  attended  school  in  the 
vicinity  of  Surrattsville,  becoming  acquainted  with  the 
Surratt  family,  and  still  continued  his  visits  in  Prince 
George's  county.  ''Light  and  trifling,"  ''far  more  of 
a  boy  than  a  man,"  "easily  led,"  "unreliable,"  "fond 
of  practical  jokes,"  "with  a  laugh  on  his  face  all  the 
time,"  as  he  was  described  by  different  persons  who 
knew  him  from  childhood* — the  actor  whom  he  had 
often  applauded  from  the  pit  had  but  to  take  him 
by  the  hand  to  make  him  his  slave.  Atzerodt  was  a 
much  more  serviceable  acquisition.  A  German  by 
descent,  hailing  originally  from  Montgomery  county, 
north  of  the  District,  he  was  a  coachmaker  at  Port  To- 
bacco and,  since  the  outbreak  of  the  war,  had  been 
engaged  in  ferrying  across  the  Potomac,  under  cover 
of  night,  parties  bound  to  or  from  Richmond ;  a  rough, 
stolid  fellow,  fierce  in  appearance,  demeanor  and  talk, 
but  cowardly  at  heart.f 

On  the  second  of  January,  Edwin  Forrest  began  an 
engagement  at  Ford's  theatre  and  the  President  was 
accustomed  to  attend  at  least  one  of  the  performances 
of  the  great  tragedian.  The  play  of  Jack  Cade  was 
announced  for  the  night  of  Wednesday,  the  eighteenth, 
and  rumors  were  in  the  air  that  Lincoln  intended  to  be 

*Poore,  I,  377;  II,  467,  547. 

t  See  testimony  as  grouped  in  Pitman  and  argument  of  counsel. 


26  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

present.  Booth  gathers  together  his  forces.  His 
recruits  are  summoned  to  the  capital.  He  sends  fifty 
dollars  to  Chester  with  an  order  to  be  on  hand  by  Sat- 
urday night.*  He  himself  on  the  evening  of  the  tenth 
(Tuesday)  leaves  his  hotel,  travels  by  train  to  Phila- 
delphia, calls  the  next  morning  on  his  brother-in-law, 
takes  possession  of  the  package  he  had  deposited  with 
him  in  November,  takes  out  the  paper,  affixes  his  signa- 
ture, and  puts  it  back  into  the  envelope  which  he  reseals, 
superscribing  it  "J.  Wilkes  Booth,"  returns  it  to 
Clarke's  custody  and  is  back  in  Washington  on  the 
twefth  ( Thursday ).t  On  that  day  Surratt  applies 
again  for  leave  of  absence — this  time  for  three  days — 
on  the  pretext  that  his  mother  needs  him  to  escort  her 
to  their  old  home.  The  superintendent  of  the  company 
refuses,  and  on  the  following  day  Mrs.  Surratt  appears 
and  renews  the  request.  The  superintendent  is  not  to 
be  moved  and  the  son  throws  up  his  berth.  On  Satur- 
day, he  rides  over  the  well-known  road  to  his  birth- 
place, thence  to  T.  B.,  thence  to  Bryantown,  arranging 
for  relays;  thence,  finally,  to  Port  Tobacco  where  he 
finds  Atzerodt  and  spends  the  night.  Together,  the 
whole  of  the  next  day,  they  scour  the  shores  for  boats 
to  accommodate  a  party  of  ten  or  twelve  who  are  to  cross 
on  the  coming  Wednesday  night ;  and,  not  waiting  for 
the  dawn  of  Monday,  the  unwearied  rider  hastens  back 
to  the  capital.  These  preparations  however  turned  out 
to  be  useless.  The  President  did  not  attend.  It  was 
a  wild  night.    Booth  and  Surratt  were  ready,  but,  so 

*  See  Chester 's  testimony  on  C.  T.     Wash.  Evening  Star  of  that  date. 
t  Note  V  in  Appendix. 


THE   PLOT    TO    CAPTURE  27 

far  as  the  testimony  shows,  neither  Arnold  nor 
O'Laughlin  put  in  an  appearance,  and  Chester  came 
not.  To  supply  the  place  of  the  latter.  Booth  at  the  last 
moment  turned  to  John  Matthews,  a  stock-actor  at 
Ford's,  and  suddenly  thrust  upon  him  the  vacant  role; 
to  be  disappointed  again  in  spite  of  importunings  and 
threatenings,  although,  as  we  shall  see,  the  failure  did 
not  interrupt  their  intimacy.* 

The  total  failure  of  this  precipitous  experiment  to 
realize  that  feature  of  the  plan  that  appealed  the  more 
powerfully  to  the  inventor's  imagination  served  but  to 
disclose  its  impracticability.  So  long  as  the  seizure 
was  to  take  place  in  a  crowded  theatre,  the  success 
of  the  plot  depended  upon  a  contingency  which  could 
not  be  counted  on  for  a  sufficient  length  of  time  before- 
hand to  admit  of  the  requisite  preparations;  and,  fur- 
thermore, the  subordinate  parts — for  example,  putting 
out  the  lights  at  the  proper  moment,  handling  the  cap- 
tive when  thrown  from  the  box  and  hustled  across  the 
stage,  opening  the  rear  door  at  a  given  signal — called 
for  an  amount  of  nerve  and  familiarity  with  the  prem- 
ises scarcely  inferior  to  that  which  so  singularly  quali- 
fied the  leader  for  the  principal  role.  For  this  reason, 
therefore,  while  there  was  no  abandonment  of  the  pro- 
ject even  in  this  questionable  shape,  there  occurred 
at  this  stage  a  serious  interruption  to  its  progress. 
Booth  was  absent  from  Washington  for  nearly  a 
month;  for  a  part  of  the  time  in  the  city  of  New 
York,  stopping  at  the  residence  of  his  brother  Ed- 


« 


S.  T.,  Wiechmann's  testimony,  372,  414;  Martin's,  213;  Cleaver's, 
204;  Matthews  in  Imp.  In  v.,  782. 


28  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

win.  He  was  evidently  disheartened  over  the  pros- 
pects of  his  enterprise,  for  he  complained  to  Chester 
of  the  lukewarmness  of  his  followers,  denounced 
Matthews  for  his  cowardice,  and,  lamenting  the  neces- 
sity for  applying  for  funds  to  the  Richmond  authori- 
ties, took  back  the  fifty  dollars  he  had  advanced  to  his 
fellow-actor  who  persisted  in  his  refusal  to  join.*  Dur- 
ing this  interval,  matters  were  virtually  at  a  standstill 
at  the  capital.  Atzerodt,  weary  of  his  watch  at  Port 
Tobacco,  comes  to  Washington  in  search  of  his 
employer  and  makes  his  first  call  at  the  house  in  H 
Street.  He  is  introduced  by  Surratt  to  the  other  mem- 
bers of  the  household — Wiechmann  finding  him  to  be 
"a  very  funny  sort  of  a  fellow";  so  much  so,  indeed, 
that  one  night,  during  Surratt 's  absence  in  New  York, 
he  is  regaled  with  whiskey  in  Wiechmann 's  room  by  this 
favorite  boarder  and  a  blockade-runner,  named  Howell, 
also  awaiting  Surratt 's  return,  and  then  put  to  bed  in 
the  attic ;  an  incident  arousing  the  outspoken  displeas- 
ure of  the  landlady.!  Wliat  is  a  much  more  material 
circumstance,  Arnold  and  O'Laughlin  rent  a  room  on 
D  Street  the  tenth  of  February :— this,  so  far  as  is 
known,  being  their  first  appearance  on  the  scene  of 
action  since  their  enlistment,  four  months  before,  f 
Booth  returns  on  the  evening  of  the  twenty-second, 
either  in  company  with  or  within  a  day  or  two  of 
Surratt  who  had  gone  to  New  York  on  an  aifair  of  his 

*  Chester,  ut  sup. 

t  See  Wieehmann  on  S.  T.,  374,  417-19,  439;  C.  T.,  Poore,  I,  72,  88; 
II,  355-8,  360. 

t  Poore,  C.  T.,  I,  139. 


THE   PLOT    TO   CAPTURE  29 

own;  and  from  this  date  until  the  breakdown  of  the 
plot,  the  members  of  the  band  remain  within  hail  of 
their  captain,  who  spends  the  interval,  during  which 
the  approach  of  the  second  inauguration  renders  it  un- 
likely that  the  President  would  attend  the  theatre,  in 
making  several  trips  into  lower  Maryland,  in  calling 
at  the  house  in  H  Street  and  in  holding  consultations 
with  Arnold  and  O'Laughlin.* 

It  was  during  this  i^artial  lull  that  the  entrance  of  a 
sinister  figure  upon  the  scene  seems  to  have  whetted 
his  somewhat  blunted  purpose.  On  the  first  of  March, 
while  standing  on  the  threshold  of  Barnum's  Hotel  in 
Baltimore,  he  recognized  in  a  stranger  dragging  his 
limbs  painfully  along  the  street,  the  boy,  whom,  in  the 
fall  of  1861,  he  had  met  while  playing  an  engagement 
at  Riclmiond.  At  that  date,  Lewis  Thornton  Powell, 
the  son  of  a  Baptist  preacher  stationed  in  Florida, 
though  but  sixteen  years  of  age,  was  a  soldier  in  a 
Confederate  regiment.  Having  obtained  a  pass  he 
went  to  his  first  play  and  was  so  enthralled  by  the  per- 
formance of  the  leading  actor  that  he  ventured  behind 
the  scenes  to  lay  his  homage  at  the  feet  of  the  en- 
chanter. Since  that  memorable  hour,  he  had  passed 
through  vicissitudes  of  fortune  calculated  to  put  to 
the  proof  the  sanity  of  the  maturest  mind ; — sharing  in 
the  fighting  around  Richmond  and  then  at  Antietam 
and  Chancellorsville ;  wounded  at  Gettysburg,  taken 
prisoner  and  detailed  to  serve  as  a  hospital  nurse; 
escaping  and  rejoining  the  Confederates;  losing  his 
two  brothers  at  Murfreesboro.  In  January,  1865,  in 
despair  of  his  cause  he  wandered  into  Alexandria,  tak- 

*  Poore  ut  sup.;  Bunker's  Mem.  in  Appendix. 


30  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 


ing  the  oath  of  allegiance  to  the  United  States ;  making 
his  way  to  Baltimore  he  spends  six  weeks  looking  for 
work  and  at  last,  for  an  assault  upon  a  colored  servant 
in  a  fit  of  fury,  is  brought  before  the  provost-marshal 
and  ordered  north  of  Philadelphia.  In  this  extremity, 
homeless,  penniless,  in  rags,  without  food,  banished  to 
a  region  where  he  could  hope  for  no  succor,  he  hears 
the  voice  that  nearly  four  years  ago  had  so  captivated 
his  senses  sounding  in  his  ear  like  a  veritable  call  from 
on  High.  Booth  takes  him  by  the  hand,  gives  him 
food  and  clothing  and,  unfolding  before  his  dazzled 
eyes  the  scheme  he  has  in  view,  points  out  the  path  of 
glory  and  revenge.  Springing  from  the  depths  of 
despondency,  the  half-maddened  victim  of  suffering 
and  disappointment  clutches  the  opportunity  thus  held 
out  to  him  with  the  eagerness  of  a  drowning  man  and 
swears  allegiance  to  his  present  saviour  as  his  future 
lord  and  master.  Payne — for  that  was  the  name  he 
took  the  oath  under  and  subsequently  went  by — was  a 
gladiator  in  physical  development  though  but  twenty 
years  of  age.  Tall,  straight  as  an  Indian  and  as  imper- 
turbable; with  coarse  black  hair  parted  low  on  one 
side,  ruddy  complexion,  small  dark  eyes  with  a  slight 
cast  in  one  and  a  wild  light  in  both,  full  lips  pressed 
together  by  a  cruel  under  jaw;  of  a  narrow  order  of 
intellect  and  that  undeveloped  if  not  actually  deranged 
— he  was  but  the  unreasoning  creature  of  his  environ- 
ment, without  fear  and  without  remorse.  The  order  of 
the  provost-marshal  making  it  imperative  that  he 
should  disappear  from  Baltimore,  Booth  took  him  to 
Washington  and  kept  him  hidden  until  after  the  inaug- 


THE    PLOT    TO    CAPTURE  31 

uration;  probably  at  the  hotel  where  he  himself  was 
stopping,  as  he  did  not  register  as  usual.*  On  the 
evening  of  the  third  of  March  he  himself,  in  company 
with  Surratt  and  AViechmann,  was  at  the  capitol  watch- 
ing the  closing  hours  of  the  Congress;  at  the  inaugura- 
tion he  stood  close  to  the  central  figure,  whose  capture 
he  was  meditating  and  whom  he  was  destined  so  soon 
to  destroy ;  at  night  he  was  in  the  parlor  of  the  house 
in  H  Street  with  Surratt,  who  had  been  riding  round 
town  all  day  at  the  heels  of  the  procession.f 

The  seating  of  their  contemplated  prisoner  in  his  high 
place  for  four  years  more  was  the  signal  for  every 
member  of  the  band  to  prepare  for  action.  If  any- 
thing was  to  be  done  to  stay  the  triumph  of  the  Union, 
now,  if  ever,  was  the  time.  Herold  for  the  first  and 
only  time  is  seen  at  Mrs.  Surratt 's,  consulting  with 
Atzerodt  and  the  son  of  the  house.  Payne  ventures 
out  under  cover  of  night  to  make  the  acquaintance  of 
the  lieutenant  of  his  captain;  is  received  in  Surratt 's 
absence  by  "Wieclmiann  and  introduced  to  the  ladies 
as  a  Baptist  minister  by  the  name  of  "Wood:  remains 
overnight  and  goes  away  in  the  early  morning  without 
seeing  the  object  of  his  quest.  A  few  days  afterwards, 
calling  a  second  time,  he  finds  a  young  man  lying  on 
the  bed  in  an  upper  room,  whom  Wiechmann  identifies 
as  Surratt,  holds  a  private  interview  with  him  and 
is  notified  that  by  agreement  between  the  two  prin- 

*  TestimonT  as  to  Payne  in  Pitman ;  of  Eckert  in  Imp.  Inv.,  671 ; 
Bunker 's  Mem.,   S.   T.,  330  and  in  Appendix. 

t  Wiechmann,  S.  T.,  379;  Note  I  to  Chap.  II  in  Appendix. 


32  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

cipals  in  the  plot  he  is  to  remain  under  the  Surratt 
roof  in  secret  until  all  is  over.* 

An  important  step  is  now  to  be  taken,  which,  it  is 
singular  in  so  perilous  an  enterprise,  had  not  been 
thought  of  before.  Hitherto  the  several  members  of 
the  band  had  never  been  brought  together.  Arnold 
and  O'Laughlin,  the  oldest  recruits,  had  never  met 
their  later  co-adherents ;  Surratt,  Atzerodt  and  Herold, 
so  far  as  appears,  had  never  even  heard  of  them,  and 
Payne,  the  latest  comer,  of  course,  was  acquainted  with 
none  but  his  captain.  To  remedy  this  disorder  in  the 
ranks,  notice  was  sent  round  of  a  midnight  assembly 
to  be  held  at  Oautier's  restaurant  on  Pennsylvania 
Avenue  on  Friday  the  seventeenth  of  March  ;t  and,  in 
the  meantime,  Payne  was  to  be  taken  to  the  theatre 
to  inspect  the  proposed  scene  of  action  before  being 
introduced  to  his  fellows  who  were  already  cognizant 
of  the  complicated  hazards  they  were  to  run.  In  pur- 
suance of  this  programme,  Booth  engages  the  private 
box  at  Ford's  which,  with  the  one  adjoining  nearer  the 
stage  (the  partition  between  the  two  being  removed), 
was  invariably  appropriated  to  the  use  of  the  Presi- 
dent whenever  that  high  officer  was  to  be  present; 
giving  a  ticket  of  admission  to  Surratt  who,  in  a  closed 
carriage,  with  two  of  the  lady  boarders,  conducts 
Payne,  disguised  in  Wiechmann's  military  cloak,  to 
the  play.  Between  the  acts.  Booth  comes  to  the  box, 
and  the  three  men  proceed  to   take  a  view  of  the 

*C.  T.,  Poore,  I,  79;   S.  T.,  379-80;  testimony  of  Miss  Fitzpatrick, 
Poore,  II,  91,  183;  S.  T.,  232-3,  377. 
t  See  Note  VI  in  Appendix. 


THE   PLOT    TO   CAPTURE  33 

premises.  They  step  out  into  the  narrow  passage 
behind  and  discover  that  the  door  leading  from  the 
dress  circle  has  no  fastening  whatever.  They  examine 
the  two  other  doors;  the  one  leading  into  the  box  the 
party  were  occupying,  its  lock  having  been  forced  a 
few  nights  before  to  let  in  a  company  that  arrived  after 
the  usher  had  gone  home  with  the  key,  they  found 
could  be  opened  by  a  mere  push ;  the  lock  of  the  other 
was  substantially  in  the  same  condition.  The  inspec- 
tion over,  Booth  departs;  Surratt  and  Payne  sit  out 
the  play,  escort  the  ladies  home  and  then  are  off  for 
the  rendezvous.* 

At  this  first  meeting  of  the  band  there  were  present 
Booth,  Arnold,  O'Laughlin,  Surratt,  Atzerodt,  Herold 
and  Payne.  The  session  was  a  stormy  one, — the 
assembly  being  divided  on  the  question  as  to  where 
the  seizure  should  be  made.  Booth,  clinging  to  the 
more  spectacular  method,  called  attention  to  the  ease 
with  which  the  President  could  be  reached  owing  to 
the  condition  of  the  doors  which  one  of  their  number, 
accompanied  by  himself,  had  just  discovered.  Arnold, 
on  the  other  hand,  protested  that  an  attack  in  a 
crowded  theatre  was  impracticable;  involved  inter- 
minable delay,  no  one  being  able  to  foresee  when  the 
President  would  attend ;  a  capture  in  the  suburbs  was 
much  more  feasible;  and,  reminding  his  leader  of  a 
rumor  abroad  that  the  President  was  going  to  attend 
a  theatrical  performance  at  or  near  the  Soldiers' 
Home,  he  declared  that  ''if  the  thing  was  not  done  in 
a   week"   he,   for   one,   would   withdraw   altogether. 

*Poore,  II,  44,  91;  S.  T.,  234,  613,  378;  Pitman,  109,  111. 
3 


34  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

Booth,  as  was  his  wont  when  he  met  with  opposition, 
grew  angry  and  retorted  that  a  man  who  talked  of 
backing  out  ought  to  be  shot.  But  Arnold  was  not  to 
be  intimidated.  "Two  could  play  at  that  game,"  he 
quietly  replied.  Moreover,  the  majority  seemed  to  be 
on  his  side.  In  truth,  as  has  been  well  said,  the  pro- 
ject in  the  shape  insisted  upon  by  its  author  so  bristled 
with  difficulties  that  *'it  was  only  necessary  for  the 
parties  concerned  to  assemble  and  arrange  to  put  it  in 
motion  for  the  whole  thing  to  fall  to  pieces."*  The 
conclusion  finally  arrived  at  was  that,  if  the  rumor 
mentioned  turned  out  to  be  true,  an  attempt  should 
be  made  to  intercept  the  visitor — notice  of  the  day 
and  hour  to  be  given  the  following  evening  at  Ford's 
theatre,  where  Booth  was  to  appear  in  his  celebrated 
character  of  Pescara.f 

Accordingly,  at  the  succeeding  performance  every 
member  of  the  band  was  on  hand  with  the  exception  of 
Payne  whom  it  was  thought  best  to  keep  still  under 
cover.  In  the  book  of  Fate  it  was  to  be  the  last 
appearance  on  the  stage  of  the  popular  actor  save 
when  he  bounded  on  the  boards  from  the  body  of  the 
dying  Lincoln.  His  friends  and  admirers  crowded  the 
house,  as  if  to  bid  him  a  final  farewell;  Wiechmann 
and  a  fellow-boarder  named  Holahan  mingled  in  the 
throng  with  Surratt,  Atzerodt  and  Herold;  Arnold 
and  O'Laughlin  sending  a  complimentary  ticket  to  the 
woman  from  whom  they  rented  their  room.     After  the 

*  Cox's  argument,  Pitman,  343. 

t  See  Note  VI  in  Appendix,  and  Poors,  I,  429,  431;  S.  T.,  380;  Imp. 
Inv.,  674. 


THE    PLOT    TO    CAPTURE  35 

play  was  over  Booth  passed  the  word  around  that 
the  expected  drive  was  to  come  off  Monday,  the  rendez- 
vous to  be  in  a  piece  of  woods  near  where  the  Seventh 
Street  road  crosses  the  city  line ;  and  the  hour,  two  in 
the  afternoon.  Sunday  passed  in  quiet  suspense; 
Payne  and  Surratt  in  the  attic  of  the  house  in  H  Street 
playing  with  revolvers  and  bowie  knives — an  amuse- 
ment in  which  they  were  interrupted  by  the  too  curious 
Wiechmann.  The  next  day  ''all  rode  out,  but  in  pairs'* 
— Arnold  and  O'Laughlin,  Atzerodt  and  Payne,  Booth 
and  Surratt; — the  last  four  starting  from  the  front 
of  the  boarding  house.  Herold  was  sent  on  ahead  to 
carry  arms  and  ammunition  and  other  equipments  as 
far  as  T.  B.,  a  hamlet  five  or  six  miles  beyond  Surratts- 
ville;  there  to  await  the  coming  cavalcade.  They 
gather  together  at  the  appointed  spot.  The  carriage 
is  to  be  surrounded;  the  driver  put  out  of  the  way; 
Surratt  is  to  mount  the  box  and  take  the  reins;  and 
then,  on  to  the  Eastern  Branch,  across  the  bridge  and 
over  the  familiar  road! — to  Surrattsville ;  to  T.  B.; 
to  Beantown;  to  Port  Tobacco  and  across  the  Poto- 
mac, Atzerodt  acting  as  ferryman ;  and  the  commander- 
in-chief  of  the  Union  armies  is  a  prisoner  in  the  hands 
of  the  enemy! 

The  noise  of  wheels  indicates  that  the  decisive  hour 
has  come,  and  every  rider  straightens  himself  for  the 
fray.  The  carriage  drives  by,  but  lo!  the  President 
is  not  inside;  as  if  some  warning  had  been  given, 
another  officer*  sits  placid  in  his  stead.  Filled  with 
chagrin  and  apprehension  of  betrayal,  the  horsemen 

*  Said  to  have  been  Chase,  C.  J.,  which  seems  impossible. 


36  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

scatter  in  all  directions.  To  Wiechmann  reading  in 
his  room  at  six  o'clock,  enters  Surratt  brandishing  a 
revolver,  proclaiming  his  ''ruin"  and  imploring  his 
chum  to  provide  shelter  for  him  in  a  clerkship.  To 
them  enters  Payne,  silent,  pistol  on  hip,  blood-red  with 
rage.  Last  comes  the  star-actor,  riding- whip  in  hand, 
striding  up  and  down,  in  the  depth  of  his  disappoint- 
ment oblivious  of  the  witness  sitting  by.  The  three 
retire  to  the  attic,  hold  a  hurried  consultation  and  then 
leave  the  house  together.  Pajme  goes  to  Baltimore 
and  thence,  bethinking  himself  of  the  provost-mar- 
shal's sentence,  to  New  York;  and  Booth  follows  him 
the  next  day.  Arnold  and  O'Laughlin  hasten  to  their 
homes.  Through  the  night  Surratt  and  Atzerodt  ride 
after  Herold,  whom  they  meet  as  he  is  starting  back 
early  in  the  morning.  On  their  return  trip  they  stop 
at  the  Surratt  tavern  where  they  deposit  the  contents 
of  Herold 's  buggy — two  carbines,  two  double-barreled 
guns,  a  revolver,  a  coil  of  rope,  a  monkey  wrench; — 
Surratt  pointing  out  to  the  landlord  a  fit  place  for  the 
concealment  of  the  carbines.  Finally,  at  noon  of  the 
next  day,  the  President  takes  the  steamboat  for  City 
Point,  to  remain  at  the  front  until  the  fall  of  Rich- 
mond and  the  surrender  of  Lee  knock  the  life  out  of 
plots  for  his  capture.  On  Saturday,  Surratt  departs 
for  the  Confederate  capital,  not  to  return  until  it  is 
taken.  On  Monday,  Arnold  writes  a  letter  to  Booth 
withdrawing  from  "the  enterprise,"  and  on  the  first 
of  April  enters  upon  his  duties  as  clerk  in  a  store  at 
Old  Point  Comfort.  And  so,  the  plotters  having  dis- 
banded, the  plot  to  capture  the  President  of  the  United 


THE    PLOT    TO    CAPTURE  37 

States   passes   into   the   limbo    of   the   abortive   con- 
spiracies of  history.* 

Nevertheless,  it  should  be  carefully  borne  in  mind 
that,  though  fantastic  in  conception,  well-nigh  impos- 
sible of  execution,  nay,  in  some  respects  ridiculous, 
if  not  insane,  the  conspiracy  was  an  indubitable 
actuality.  Indeed,  it  was  to  fortify  this  admonition, 
by  the  wilful  neglect  of  which  the  prosecuting  officers 
of  the  government  wrought  such  inexpiable  woe,  that 
the  present  writer  has  entered  so  minutely  into  the 
details  of  the  inception,  development  and  denouement 
of  the  plot.  We  trust  that  the  readers  of  this  chapter 
will  proceed  to  the  next  under  no  such  fatal  miscon- 
ception. To  comprehend  the  awful  event  to  follow, 
it  is  absolutely  indispensable  to  start  with  the  belief 
that  the  words  of  Booth's  diary  are  true:  **For  six 
months  we  had  worked  to  capture." 

*  For  particulars  of  attempt  to  kidnap,  see  testimony  of  Wieehmann 
on  C.  T.,  Poore,  I,  370,  and  S.  T.,  399-400;  Arnold's  letter  given  ia 
Appendix,  Note  III;  Lloyd  on  S.  T.,  277;  J,  C.  Thompson,  S.  T.,  515; 
Note  VI  of  Appendix ;  Arnold 's  letter  to  Booth  in  Note  VII  of  Appendix. 


CHAPTER    II 

The  Assassination 

That  the  murder  of  the  captive  was  a  likely  con- 
tingency of  the  plot  to  capture  may  have  suggested 
itself  to  the  mind  of  its  author;  but,  as  such  a  catas- 
trophe would  have  been  fatal  to  the  result  he  aimed  at, 
he  must  have  looked  upon  it  as  an  unavoidable  risk  to 
be  guarded  against  with  the  utmost  caution.  A  dead 
Lincoln,  while  placing  the  lives  of  the  captors  in 
imminent  peril,  would  set  no  Confederate  prisoner 
free.  Manifestly,  assassination  as  an  end  would  not 
have  been  postulated  as  long  as  hopes  of  capture  might 
be  entertained ;  and  it  is  evident  that,  notwithstanding 
the  dismal  failure  of  his  first  overt  attempt,  the 
leader  had  not  reached  this  condition  of  mind.  From 
New  York  he  kept  up  communication  with  his  scattered 
band;  returned  to  Washington  on  the  morning  of 
Saturday,  the  twenty-fifth  of  March — the  day  on  which 
Surratt  departed  for  Richmond — and  on  the  succeed- 
ing Monday  a  room  was  engaged  for  Payne  at  the 
Herndon  House,  where  that  conspirator  took  up  his 
quarters  on  Friday,  the  thirty-first.*  But  the  con- 
tinued absence  of  the  President  at  the  front  rendered 
any  present  movement  futile,  and  on  the  first  of  April 
Booth  went  back  to  the  metropolis. 

*" sturdy"  letter,  C.  T.,  Poore,  I,  371;  S.  T.,  380-4,  439;  Poore,  I, 
32,  449;   S.  T.,  246. 

(38) 


THE    xVSSASSINATION  39 

There  the  tidings  of  the  fall  of  Richmond  reached 
him  and  all  thought  of  an  exchange  of  prisoners  was 
banished  forever.  Meeting  his  friend  Chester  on 
Friday,  the  seventh  of  April,  he  gave  vent  to  his 
despair ;  acknowledging  that,  owing  to  some  of  his  part- 
ners backing  out,  his  project  had  fallen  through  and, 
in  consequence,  he  was  selling  off  his  horses.  In  the  ex- 
tremity of  his  chagrin  he  struck  the  table  at  which 
the  two  friends  were  sitting  and  exclaimed:  "What 
an  excellent  chance  I  had,  if  I  wished,  to  kill  the  Presi- 
dent on  inauguration  day!  I  was  on  the  stand  as 
close  to  him  nearly  as  I  am  to  you."*  In  this  des- 
perate mood  he  left  New  York  for  the  last  time, 
arriving  at  Washington  on  Saturday,  the  eighth,  to 
remain  until  the  end;  and  on  Sunday  evening  Presi- 
dent Lincoln  returned,  bringing  with  him  news  of  the 
surrender  of  Lee.  The  loyal  inhabitants  of  the  capital 
plunged  at  once  into  a  round  of  festivities.  The  old 
flag  was  set  flying  from  every  building,  enthusiastic 
crowds  filling  the  streets  by  day  and  torchlight  pro- 
cessions by  night.  For  the  nation,  the  day  of  jubilee 
had  come;  for  the  defeated  conspirator,  nothing  was 
left  but  to  hover  in  the  narrowing  outer  darkness, 
watching  the  chance  to  play  the  Brutus  or  the  Tell 
of  his  distempered  imagination.  He  was  virtually 
alone.  Arnold  and  O'Laughlin  had  left  him;  Surratt 
had  gone  to  Canada ;  Payne,  Atzerodt  and  Herold,  the 
creatures  of  his  bounty,  clung  to  his  heels,  waiting  for 
orders  he  was  as  yet  at  a  loss  to  issue.  On  the  evening 
of  Tuesday,  the  eleventh,  from  a  window  of  the  White 

*  See  Note  I  to  this  chapter,  in  Appendix. 


40  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

House,  the  President  addressed  a  crowd  on  the  lawn, 
in  the  midst  of  which  were  Booth  and  Payne.  Refer- 
ring to  the  experiment  he  himself  had  initiated  in 
reconstructing  the  state  of  Louisiana,  he  said :  '  ^  It  is 
also  unsatisfactory  to  some  that  the  elective  franchise 
is  not  given  to  the  colored  man.  I  would  myself  prefer 
that  it  were  conferred  on  the  very  intelligent  and  on 
those  who  served  our  cause  as  soldiers."*  This  utter- 
ance, though  too  mild  to  suit  the  radicals,  threw  Booth 
into  such  a  rage  that  he  urged  his  companion  to  shoot 
its  author  on  the  spot;  but  Payne  protested  that  the 
risk  was  too  great  even  for  one  so  reckless  as  himself, 
and  the  two  walked  away,  Booth  muttering,  ''That  is 
the  last  speech  he  will  ever  make."t 

This,  in  all  probability,  was  the  moment  when  the 
design  to  kill  first  found  lodgment  in  the  brain  of  the 
baffled  plotter.  Indeed,  in  the  first  flush  of  his  venge- 
ful spirit  he  would  be  content  with  no  single  victim, 
no  matter  how  exalted.  He  sends  Atzerodt  to  the 
Kirkwood  House  to  locate  the  room  occupied  by  the 
Vice  President,  and  the  German  takes  advantage  of 
the  opportunity  to  gaze  at  the  Abdiel  of  southern 
loyalty  as  he  sat  at  dinner  ''with  his  yellow  man 
behind  him."|  On  Thursday  afternoon  he  calls  at 
Grover's  theatre,  noticeably  anxious  to  ascertain 
whether  an  invitation  had  been  sent  to  the  President 
to  come  to  the  play  that  evening,  and  was  told  that 
one  was  about  to  be  sent  for  the  next  day  whick 

*Khodes'  Hist.  U.  S.,  Vol.  5,  135-6. 

t  Testimony  of  Maj.  Eckert,  Imp.  Inv.,  674. 

t  Testimony  of  Nevins,  C.  T.,  Poore,  II,  277. 


THE    ASSASSINATION  41 

happened  to  be  the  anniversary  of  the  fall  of  Fort 
Sumter;  tidings  which  brought  Atzerodt  early  in  the 
morning  once  more  to  the  Kirkwood,  where  he  regis- 
tered his  name,  and  without  entering  the  room  assigned 
him  went  away  with  the  key,  which  he  must  have 
delivered  to  Herold  as  that  young  man,  shortly  after- 
wards, concealed  in  the  vacant  apartment  a  revolver, 
a  bowie  knife  and  an  overcoat,  in  the  pocket  of  which 
was  the  bank  book  containing  the  account  of  Booth's 
deposit  in  the  Montreal  bank.* 

This  was  the  situation,  when,  between  eleven  and 
twelve  o'clock,  Friday  morning,  Booth,  coming  to 
Ford's  theatre  for  his  letters,  heard  that  a  messenger 
from  the  White  House  had  just  engaged  for  that  night 
the  customary  box  for  the  President,  who,  moreover, 
was  to  be  accompanied  by  General  Grant.  This  preg- 
nant piece  of  intelligence  at  once  put  out  of  the  ques- 
tion the  rival  theatre,  with  which  the  actor  was  not  so 
familiar,  fixed  Ford's  as  the  scene  of  the  coming 
tragedy  and  gave  the  leading  performer  a  straight 
and  steady  course  to  pursue.  The  unexpected  pres- 
ence of  so  formidable  an  antagonist  as  the  hero  of 
Appomatox  must  have  flurried  him  for  a  moment,  but 
he  remembered  his  minion  at  the  Herndon  House 
with  whom  he  had  so  recently  visited  the  scene  of 
action  for  another  purpose ;  and  he  lashed  the  sides  of 
his  intent  with  the  self-admonition  that  still  another 
illustrious  victim  would  redouble  the  effectiveness  of 
his  blow  and  prolong  the  echo  of  his  fame.  Dallying 
no  longer  he  marches  straight  for  the  goal;  hires  a 

*  Poore,  I,  110-1 ;  II,  538-9. 


42  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

bay  mare  for  himself  to  be  ready  at  four  o'clock  and 
orders  the  one-eyed  horse  he  bought  in  December  to  be 
transferred  to  the  stable  in  the  rear  of  Ford's  for  the 
use  of  Fajne;  calls  at  Mrs.  Surratt's  just  as  she,  with 
Wiechmann,  is  starting  for  Surrattsville,  and  hands 
her  a  package  containing  a  field-glass  to  be  delivered 
at  the  tavern ;  thence  to  the  theatre  and  into  the  empty 
auditorium.*  The  two  boxes  are  thrown  into  one,  the 
front  decorated  with  flags  and  Washington's  portrait; 
a  rocking  chair  stands  in  the  angle  of  the  box  nearest 
the  audience;  the  locks  of  the  doors  are  in  the  same 
loosened  condition  as  when  he  inspected  them  with 
Payne.  To  bore  a  hole  in  the  door  of  the  first  box 
through  which  to  peer  at  his  unsuspecting  victim 
reclining  in  the  chair ;  to  provide  for  barring  from  the 
inside  the  door  leading  from  the  dress  circle  to  the 
passageway  by  digging  out  a  mortise  in  the  plastering 
of  the  wall  and  testing  an  upright  from  a  music  stand 
he  happened  to  have  found  on  the  floor  of  the  audi- 
torium, is  the  work  of  a  few  moments,  and  his  prep- 
arations are  complete.! 

It  is  now  four  o'clock.  Going  for  his  horse  he  rides 
to  Grover's  theatre,  dismounts  and  enters  the  office. 
There  he  writes  an  article  to  the  following  effect:  he 
had  for  a  long  time  devoted  his  money,  his  time  and 
his  energies  to  the  accomplishment  of  an  end,  but  he 
had  been  baffled;  the  moment  had  at  length  arrived 
when  his  plans  must  be  changed;  the  world  may  cen- 
sure him  for  what  he  is  about  to  do,  but  he  is  sure  that 

*Poore,  I,  173-5;  Wieehmann  on  S.  T.,  391,  444-5. 
t  Poore,  I,  413-4;  III,  21;   S.  T.,  545-7,  612. 


THE    ASSASSINATION  43 

posterity  will  justify  liim.  He  signs  the  paper:  **Men 
who  love  their  country  better  than  gold  or  life.     J.  W. 

Booth, Payne, Atzerodt, Herold."    He 

encloses  it  in  an  envelope  which  he  addresses  to  the 
editor  of  the  National  Intelligencer,  seals  and  stamps 
it  for  the  post  office.  As  he  rides  up  the  avenue  he 
sees  on  the  sidewalk  John  Matthews,  the  actor  whom 
he  had  attempted  in  vain  to  enlist  in  the  plot  to  cap- 
ture, and  hands  him  the  letter  with  a  request  to  deliver 
it  in  the  morning  unless  he  saw  the  writer  in  the  mean- 
time. While  they  were  talking,  officers  of  Lee's  army 
as  prisoners  of  war  pass  by  in  a  body,  and  Booth, 
placing  his  hand  to  his  forehead,  ejaculates:  ''Great 
God!  I  have  no  longer  a  country!"  Grant  sweeps 
along  in  an  open  carriage,  and  the  startled  horseman, 
casting  one  hurried  glance  at  the  man  he  has  marked 
out  for  the  knife,  seizes  his  friend  by  the  hand  with  a 
nervous,  excited  grip,  bids  him  good-bye,  and  gallops 
away.*  Stopping  at  the  Kirkwood,  he  sends  up  his 
card  to  the  Vice  President's  private  secretary  and, 
that  officer  being  out,  he  rides  up  to  the  stable  in  the 
rear  of  the  theatre,  puts  up  his  steed  and,  passing 
through  the  building,  seeks  at  his  hotel  a  quiet  interval 
for  rest  and  refreshment.! 

Thus  pass  the  hours  of  this  fateful  afternoon. 
When,  at  seven  in  the  evening,  the  actor  leaves  the 
National  hotel  for  the  last  time,  he  has  heard  of  the 
departure  of  General  Grant  for  Burlington  and  has- 
tens to  the  Ilerndon  House  to  confer  with  his  stalwart 

*  Testimony  of  Matthews,  Imp.  Inv.,  782. 
tPoore,  I,  240-1 J  110-1. 


44  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

ally  on  this  sudden  simplification  of  the  programme. 
Payne,  for  his  part,  was  all  ready  for  whatever  work 
was  before  him.  He  had  given  notice  to  the  matron 
of  the  hotel  that  he  was  leaving  for  Baltimore,  had 
been  furnished  with  dinner  at  an  earlier  hour  than 
usual,  paid  his  bill  and  was  on  the  watch  for  his  cap- 
tain. Five  days  before,  Seward,  the  secretary  of  state, 
had  been  thrown  from  his  carriage  and  was  now  lying 
at  his  residence  with  a  broken  jaw  and  a  broken  arm. 
He  was  the  officer  designated  by  statute  to  set  the 
wheels  of  government  in  motion  when  the  presidency 
and  vice-presidency  both  became  vacant;  and,  conse- 
quently, if  Booth  and  Atzerodt  carried  out  their 
respective  parts  in  the  plot,  his  removal  would  com- 
plete the  paralysis  of  the  government.  Him,  there- 
fore, in  place  of  Grant,  Booth  handed  over  to  the 
tender  mercies  of  this  young  savage,  to  whom  it  was  a 
matter  of  indifference  whether  the  object  of  his  assault 
was  a  warrior  crowned  with  laurel  or  a  statesman 
prostrate  and  helpless  on  his  bed  of  pain.  Acting 
under  the  belief  he  expressed  beneath  the  shadow  of 
the  scaffold  that  in  war  it  was  right  to  kill  your  enemy 
wherever  you  could  find  him,  he  belted  round  his  waist 
the  revolver  and  knife,  and  pulled  on  the  cavalry  boots 
Booth  provided  for  him,  announcing  his  readiness 
for  the  fray.  Herold  and  Atzerodt  who,  during  the 
afternoon,  had  been  riding  hired  nags  aimlessly  about 
the  street  were  summoned  and  given  their  final  orders : 
Atzerodt  was  to  do  execution  on  the  Vice  President, 
and  Herold,  first  guiding  Payne  to  the  Seward  resi- 
dence, was  to  hurry  to  the  support  of  Atzerodt,  secur- 


THE   ASSASSINATION  45 

ing  by  the  way  the  articles  hidden  by  himself  in  the 
room  in  the  Kirkwood.  As  for  the  boy  Herold,  to  be 
numbered  among  ''the  assassinators  of  the  President" 
(as  he  phrased  it),*  without  himself  coming  within 
striking  distance,  appealed  to  his  instinct  for  adven- 
ture without  calling  for  a  degree  of  courage  he  was 
conscious  he  did  not  possess;  but  Atzerodt  flinched. 
Having  no  stomach  for  an  encounter  with  the  man 
who,  as  military  governor  of  Tennessee,  had  learned 
how  to  deal  with  assassins,  he  interposed  the  plea  that 
he  had  enlisted  to  capture,  but  not  to  shed  blood.  On 
the  street  while  going  to  the  stable,  his  master  en- 
deavored to  revive  his  sinking  spirits  by  the  assurance 
that  Herold  would  help  him  out,  but  the  wretched 
German  whimpered  that  it  was  impossible,  they  could 
not  do  it.  Booth  stormed  at  him,  cursed  him  for  a 
coward  and  a  traitor,  reminded  him  that  he  had  gone 
too  far  to  withdraw,  and  left  him  swaying  back  and 
forth  between  the  foreknowledge  of  failure  should  he 
make  the  attempt  and  the  likelihood  of  being  hung 
should  he  do  nothing. 

From  the  Herndon  House,  at  the  corner  of  F  and 
Ninth  streets,  to  the  alley  leading  from  F  to  the  rear 
of  the  theatre  was  but  half  a  block.  The  hour  is  close 
upon  ten.  The  building,  as  they  near  it,  is  lighted  up 
and  the  voices  of  the  actors  and  the  applause  and 
laughter  of  the  spectators  can  be  heard  without.  The 
play  is  now  more  than  half  over — the  second  scene  of 
the  third  and  last  act  being  on.  It  is  the  last  appear- 
ance  and   the   benefit   of   Laura   Keene,    acting   her 

*  Testimony  of  Jett,  Poore,  I,  309. 


46  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

original  character  in  the  comedy  of  ''Our  American 
Cousin,"  to  which  Joseph  Jefferson  and  the  elder 
Sothern,  in  the  two  other  leading  roles,  had  lent  wide- 
spread celebrity.  The  President  had  entered  at  about 
half-past  eight,  greeted  by  a  burst  of  music  from  the 
orchestra  and  the  cheers  of  the  audience  rising  as  one 
man.  At  the  stable,  the  two  leading  conspirators  part 
for  the  last  time;  Payne,  mounted  on  his  one-eyed 
horse  and  attended  by  Herold,  starts  on  his  barbarous 
errand.  Booth  leads  his  bay  horse  to  the  rear  door  of 
the  theatre  and,  calling  for  Spangler  to  hold  the 
animal,  enters  and  goes  down  under  the  stage,  out  of 
the  private  door  into  the  alley  on  the  south  side  lead- 
ing to  the  street,  and  emerges  in  front  of  the  building. 
The  White  House  carriage  stands  at  the  curb  and  a 
crowd  of  sightseers  is  on  the  sidewalk,  among  others 
the  costumer  and  the  stage  carpenter  of  the  theatre. 
An  actor,  who  is  to  sing  a  song  in  honor  of  the  Presi- 
dent at  the  close  of  the  performance,  approaches  and 
asks  the  time;  and  the  costumer,  stepping  into  the 
vestibule  and  looking  at  the  large  clock  on  the  wall, 
calls  out:  ''Ten  minutes  past  ten."  Booth  walks  into 
the  lobby  and  opening  the  door  into  the  parquette  notes 
the  position  of  the  President.  Stepping  back,  he 
mounts  the  stairs  leading  to  the  dress  circle  and,  hat 
in  hand,  picks  his  way  amongst  the  chairs  that  choke 
the  space  usually  left  vacant  behind  the  outer  row  of 
seats  until  he  reaches  the  door  of  the  passage  behind 
the  private  boxes ;  and,  then,  leaning  against  the  wall, 
he  takes  "a  leisurely  survey  of  the  house."* 

*Poore,  I,  179,  187-203;   S.  T.,  570-1,  566;   cf.  Dye's  testimony  on 
G.  T.   (Poors,  181)  and  on  S.  T.,  131. 


THE    ASSASSINATION  47 

At  this  nick  of  time,  when  the  uplifting  of  a  finger 
might  have  changed  the  whole  trend  of  the  future,  let 
us  call  up  the  spectacle  before  the  sad  eyes  of  Abraham 
Lincoln  in  the  last  moment  of  his  consciousness.     He 
was  seated  in  the  corner  of  the  box  nearest  the  audi- 
torium; on  his  right  Mrs.  Lincoln,  and  at  the  farther 
end  Miss  Harris  and  Major  Eathbone — the  daughter 
and  step-son  of  senator  Ira  Harris  from  New  York — 
who  had  been  invited  to  fill  the  place  of  General  and 
Mrs.  Grant.     The  body  of  the  house  was  filled  to  over- 
flowing, but  the  six  private  boxes  other  than  the  two 
set  apart  for  the  illustrious  visitor  were  empty;  and 
no  member  of  the  cabinet  was  present.     Laura  Keene 
was  standing  at  the  first  right  entrance,  and  Maddox, 
the  property  man,  at  the  corresponding  entrance  on 
the  left.    Behind  the  scene  that  was  on,   Spangler, 
having  deputed  the  task  of  holding  Booth's  horse  to 
a  lad  who  usually  stood  guard  at  the  door  leading  to 
the  south  alley,  was  standing,  with  his  mate  oppo- 
site, ready  to  draw  off  the  flat;  and  Matthews,  who 
personated  Coyle,  was   sitting  farther  back  waiting 
to    be    discovered.      Asa    Trenchard — personated    by 
Harry  Hawk — had  the  open  stage  to  himself — Mrs. 
Mountchessington    having    left   him    alone    with   the 
rebuke  that  he  was  not  ''used  to  the  manners  of  good 
society,"  in  response  to  which  aspersion  he  was  solil- 
oquizing: ''Well,  I  guess  I  know  enough  to  turn  you 
inside  out,  old  gal — you  sockdologizing  old  man- trap." 
In  the  parquette.  General  Burnside  was  in  the  act  of 
taking  a  seat,  and  the  President,  his  attention  being 
drawn  to  the  unfortunate  commander  he  had  been  con- 


48  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

strained  to  remove,  was  pulling  the  folds  of  the  flag 
away  from  the  framework  of  the  box  and  turning  his 
head  to  that  quarter  of  the  auditorium.* 

Satisfied  that  the  right  moment  had  come,  Booth 
steps  down,  shows  his  card  to  the  President's  mes- 
senger sitting  below  him,  and  without  waiting  for  the 
latter 's  assent,  enters  the  little  corridor,  shuts  the 
door  behind  him  and  fixes  the  bar  in  place.  The  door 
of  the  farther  box  stands  open.  First  peering  through 
the  hole  in  the  closed  door  behind  the  President,  he 
swings  it  back,  puts  the  muzzle  of  his  derringer  to  the 
head  of  the  figure  reclining  in  the  chair  and  sends  a 
bullet  crashing  through  the  brain.  **  Revenge  for  the 
South !"  he  cries ;  and  letting  fall  the  exhausted  pistol 
and  drawing  his  knife,  he  slashes  Rathbone's  arm 
uplifted  to  intercept  him,  and  vaults  over  the  balus- 
trade to  the  boards,  twelve  feet  below.  Stumbling  on 
one  knee,  he  raises  himself  slowly  up,  falters  out: 
^'Sic  semper  tyrannis,^^  and  limps  in  a  stooping  pos- 
ture across  the  stage ;  a  blue  shred  of  the  flag  he  had 
torn  in  his  leap  fluttering  in  mute  but  ineffectual  pro- 
test from  the  spur  on  his  right  heel.  Dashing  down 
the  passage  to  the  rear,  he  thrusts  aside  with  his 
bloody  weapon  Withers — the  leader  of  the  orchestra — 
who  stands  paralyzed  in  his  path,  and  another  em- 
ployee who  attempts  to  arrest  his  flight;  tears  open 
the  back  door ;  springs  upon  his  horse — knocking  down 
with  the  butt  of  his  knife  the  boy  who  is  holding  the 
animal — and  is  off  like  a  whirlwind,  the  hoofs  of  his 

*Poore,  I,  195,  225,  189,  200;  Pitman  104;  Matthews  on  Imp.  Inv., 
787;  Play  of  "American  Cousin";  Oldroyd.  28;  cf.  with  Play,  testi- 
mony of  Maddox,  Poore,  II,  109. 


THE    ASSASSINATION  49 

steed  striking  sparks  from  the  cobblestones   of  the 
alley.* 

For  an  instant,  the  sound  of  the  shot  stupefies  both 
players  and  audience.  Hawk,  struck  dumb  by  the  wild 
figure  bounding  on  the  stage,  makes  a  hurried  exit  not 
set  down  in  his  part.  Matthews,  out  of  sight,  con- 
jectures some  new  trick  is  being  played  on  Dundreary. 
Eathbone's  cry  of  "Stop  that  man,"  repeated  by  Miss 
Harris,  if  heard,  is  not  heeded.  A  portly  gentleman 
leaps  from  the  orchestra  rail  over  the  footlights  and 
pursues  the  flying  phantom.  Smoke  comes  sailing  out 
of  the  box.  A  woman's  voice  calls  for  water.  Span- 
gler  shoves  back  the  scene  and  Laura  Keene  runs  out, 
raising  both  hands  and  ejaculating  "We  have  got  him! 
We  will  get  him!"  A  soldier  and  a  naval  surgeon 
with  the  assistance  of  Miss  Harris  clamber  up  from 
the  stage,  and  Dr.  Charles  Taft,  having  fought  his  way 
through,  is  lifted  up  by  persons  underneath.  Mean- 
while, persons  from  the  audience  are  beating  against 
the  door  leading  from  the  dress  circle,  and  Eathbone, 
though  bleeding  profusely  from  his  wound,  manages 
to  dislodge  the  bar  and  they  rush  in;  among  them 
Colonel  Crawford  and  Major  Potter  who  succor  their 
fainting  comrade.  In  the  auditorium  voices  are  heard : 
"Hang  him!  Shoot  him!"  and  then,  in  view  of  the 
assassin's  escape,  the  angry  menace,  "Burn  the 
theatre!"  floats  through  the  building  and  is  caught 

*  See  testimony  of  Ferguson,  McGowan,  Eathbone,  Withers,  Bur- 
roughs, as  given  above  and  also  Kent,  Poore,  I,  257;  Anderson,  id.  235- 
7;  Pettit,  S.  T.,  128;  Eitterspaugh,  Poore,  II,  32.  Ferguson's  the  most 
graphic.  Withers',  as  given  in  Oldroyd,  p.  20,  etc.,  not  reconcilable 
with  that  on  C.  T. 
4 


50  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

up  by  tlie  crowd  surging  to  and  fro  in  the  street. 
Through  the  distracted  audience  the  unconscious  form 
of  Lincoln  is  borne  by  reverent  hands  around  the  dress 
circle — men  tearing  up  the  seats  from  the  floor  to  make 
way  for  the  procession — thence  down  the  stairway  and 
across  the  street  to  a  private  house  opposite,  while 
messengers  are  speeding  to  summon  the  family  physi- 
cian, the  surgeon-general,  members  of  the  cabinet  and 
the  two  sons  of  the  dying  man.* 

Booth's  part  in  *'the  something  decisive  and  great'* 
that  he  thought  ''must  be  done"  was  performed 
apparently  without  a  mishap ;  not  so  the  part  assigned 
to  his  only  reliable  accomplice.  At  the  same  hour  that 
his  chief  entered  the  front  of  the  theatre,  Pavne 
entered  the  Seward  mansion,  opposite  LaFayette 
Square,  lea\dng  Herold  outside.  Under  the  pretext 
that  he  was  sent  with  medicine,  a  package  of  which  he 
ostensibly  carried  in  his  hand,  disregarding  the  re- 
monstrances of  the  bellboy  he  pushed  his  way  up  the 
two  pairs  of  stairs  until  his  advance  was  checked  by  the 
eldest  son  of  the  house.  Him,  after  a  brief  parley,  he 
battered  into  insensibility  with  his  revolver  after  it 
had  missed  fire;  and  the  soldier-nurse  opening  the 
door  of  the  sick  chamber,  he  struck  down  with  a  blow 
of  his  knife.  Bounding  to  the  couch  on  which-^his 
head  supported  by  a  steel  frame  and  swathed  in 
bandages — the  helpless  patient  lay,  he  stabbed  him 
once,  twice,  thrice,  about  the  face  and  neck,  until  he 

*  Affidavits  of  Miss  Harris  and  Eathbone  in   Baker 's  book,  471-3 ; 
letter  of  Dr.  Taft  in  Oldroyd,  29  j  Matthews  and  Ferguson,  ut  sup. 


THE    ASSASSINATION  51 

was  seized  from  behind  by  the  nurse,  and  the  mangled 
sufferer  rolled  off  the  bed  on  the  side  toward  the  wall. 
Then  ensued  a  fearful  struggle — the  nurse  clutching 
the  intruder  in  a  desperate  embrace  and  the  intruder 
stabbing  the  nurse  in  the  back  with  one  hand  and  with 
the  other  beating  him  on  the  head  with  the  revolver 
until  the  shattered  weapon  fell  to  the  floor.  At  length, 
the  second  son  aroused  by  the  noise  of  the  scuffle, 
appeared  upon  the  scene  and  inch  by  inch  pushed  the 
interlocked  pair  from  the  dimly  lighted  chamber  into 
the  full  light  of  the  hall;  whereupon  the  infuriated 
manslayer,  freeing  himself  by  a  blow  of  the  fist  from 
the  grasp  of  the  exhausted  servant,  assaulted  the 
newcomer  with  the  handle  of  his  remaining  weapon — 
crying  out  the  while ;  "  I  am  mad !  I  am  mad ! ' '  and 
sprang  down  the  stairs,  wounding  a  messenger  from 
the  State  department  whom  he  overtakes  by  the  way. 
In  the  meantime,  the  bellboy  had  run  out  into  the  street 
and  down  to  General  Augur's  headquarters  on  the 
corner  below,  shrieking  ''Murder"  as  he  went;  and  the 
daughter  of  the  house  from  an  upper  window  startled 
the  ear  of  night  with  the  same  portentous  cry.  So 
that,  when  Payne,  bareheaded  and  besmeared  with 
blood,  emerged  from  the  mansion,  he  found  himself 
deserted  by  his  guide  and  threatened  with  arrest  by 
a  party  of  soldiers  running  to  the  rescue.  Tossing 
away  his  bloodstained  knife,  he  vaulted  into  the  saddle, 
spurred  north  to  Vermont  Avenue,  turned  east,  and 
was  lost  to  sight,  leaving  behind  him,  weltering  in 
their  blood,  beside  the  cabinet  minister  he  was  sent  to 
assassinate,  four  other  human  beings  whom  he  had  no 


"?!!SU««w* 


52  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

preconceived  design  to  harm,  but  slaying  none.  His 
failure,  however,  cannot  be  ascribed  to  unsteadiness 
of  purpose  or  the  lack  of  vigor  in  his  blows.  He 
walked  with  as  firm  a  step  as  did  his  chief.  He 
'^struck"  as  "boldly"  and  with  as  strong  "a  heart." 

But,  as  to  the  two  other  conspirators — if  conspira- 
tors they  can  be  called — they  not  only  "failed";  they 
never  struck  at  all.  Herold,  scared  away  from  the 
Seward  residence  by  the  alarm  that  was  sounded, 
started  down  the  avenue,  until,  near  Willard's  Hotel, 
the  hail  of  the  liveryman  whose  horse  he  was  riding 
completed  his  discomfiture;  and  deserting  Atzerodt 
as  he  had  deserted  Payne,  he  ceased  not  his  spurring 
until  he  struck  on  the  track  of  his  master.  As  for 
Atzerodt,  his  aimless  movements  lend  a  touch  of  the 
comic  to  the  horrors  of  the  night.  The  horse  he  hired 
in  the  afternoon  he  left  at  another  stable  at  six  o'clock 
to  be  kept  saddled  and  bridled  until  ten.  At  ten  he 
called  for  it  and  rode  to  the  Kirkwood,  but  went  no 
nearer  his  prey  than  the  bar.  Even  there  he  did  not 
linger,  for,  with  instinctive  prevision,  he  knew  it  would 
be  useless  to  wait  for  his  yoke-fellow  in  crime.  He 
rode  past  Ford's  while  Booth  was  at  his  bloody  work; 
thence  past  the  Patent  Office  where  he  threw  away  his 
bowie  knife  still  in  its  red  sheath ;  and,  after  clattering 
about  the  streets  until  midnight,  he  fetched  up  at  the 
Pennsylvania  House  where  he  had  been  stopping. 
Here,  the  news  of  the  assassination  redoubled  his  ter- 
rors and  he  hastened  to  restore  his  horse  to  its  owner. 
Then,  boarding  a  horse  car  bound  for  the  Navy  Yard, 
he  begged  permission  to  sleep  in  the  store  of  an  ac- 


THE   ASSASSINATION  53 

quaintance  and  this  boon  being  denied  him  slunk  back 
to  his  hotel.  At  an  early  hour  next  morning  he  started 
on  foot  for  the  home  of  his  boyhood — twenty-two  miles 
northwest  of  Washington — pawning  his  revolver  for 
ten  dollars  at  Georgetown  after  an  unsuccessful  effort 
to  sell  his  watch.  Poor,  pitiable  caricature  of  an 
assassin!  Immolated  as  a  sort  of  proleptic  sacrifice 
for  not  doing  what  he  was  found  guilty  of  attempting 
to  do.* 

While  this  irresolute  prowler  was  drinking  whiskey 
in  the  basement  of  the  Kirkwood,  on  the  second  floor 
Andrew  Johnson,  undisturbed  by  the  faintest  premoni- 
tion of  the  tremendous  change  hanging  over  his  head, 
was  quietly  sleeping  in  his  bed.  He  spent  the  greater 
portion  of  the  day  in  the  Vice  President's  room  at  the 
capitol,  dined  at  the  hotel  at  five  o'clock  and  kept  to 
his  room  in  the  evening.  Leonard  J.  Farwell,  a  former 
governor  of  Wisconsin,  stopping  at  the  Kirkwood  and 
somewhat  intimate  with  Johnson,  sat  in  the  audience 
at  Ford's,  heard  the  fatal  shot  and  witnessed  the 
actor's  leap  upon  the  stage;  but,  unlike  the  few  spec- 
tators whose  efforts  were  directed  to  '.e  succor  of  the 
victim  or  the  capture  of  the  fugitive,  his  thoughts  flew 
to  his  fellow-guest  whose  position  in  the  government 
the  tragic  incident  would  so  highly  exalt.  Making  his 
way  out  of  the  building,  he  ran  down  Tenth  Street  and 
up  two  blocks  on  the  avenue  and  burst  into  the  Kirk- 
wood, exclaiming :  ' '  Guard  the  doors ;  the  President  is 
murdered!"     Darting  up  the  stairs  he  rapped  again 

*  As  to  Herold,  see  Poore,  I,  326.  As  to  Atzerodt,  id.,  II,  507,  510 ; 
I,  395,  341,  390;  his  confession,  Poore,  I,  396,  399;  Pitman,  307. 


54  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

and  again  on  the  door  of  the  Vice  President's  apart- 
ment, calling  out  in  a  loud  voice :  ' '  Governor  Johnson, 
if  you  are  in,  I  must  see  you ! ' '  The  awakened  sleeper 
sprang  from  his  bed  and  unlocked  the  door ;  and  Far- 
well  gasps  out  the  news  so  overwhelming  in  its  effect 
that  (as  Farwell  states)  "grasping  hands  we  fell  upon 
each  other  as  for  mutual  support."  Other  friends 
speedily  gathered.  The  report  of  the  assassination 
of  the  Secretary  of  State  and  the  advent  of  the  sol- 
diers sent  to  protect  the  Vice  President  deepened  the 
impression  that  murder  was  still  in  the  air  and  the 
lives  of  the  surviving  heads  of  the  government  still  in 
peril.  The  first  move  of  Johnson  was  to  send  Farwell 
to  ascertain  the  precise  dimensions  of  the  calamity; 
and  the  ex-governor  with  some  trepidation  proceeded 
to  the  house  where  the  President  had  been  carried  and 
thence  by  a  wide  detour  to  the  Seward  residence. 
Eeturning  to  the  Kirkwood  he  reported  the  particulars 
he  had  gathered;  whereupon  the  Vice  President,  dis- 
regarding the  remonstrances  of  his  friends  against  his 
venturing  out  at  such  an  hour,  and  declining  the  offer 
of  a  guard,  ordered  Major  O'Bierne  to  lead  the  way 
and,  taking  Farwell  with  him,  made  his  way  along  the 
crowded  streets  to  the  death-bed  of  Lincoln.  There, 
looking  sadly  on  while  the  life  of  his  great  predecessor 
ebbed  slowly  away,  he  remained  until,  at  twenty- two 
minutes  after  seven  in  the  morning  the  assassin's 
bullet  made  him  President  of  the  United  States.* 

*  Testimony  of  Farwell  in  Pitman,  151 ;  in  Poore,  III,  419.  Farwell 
presented  to  Johnson  an  engrossed  account  of  the  events  of  the  night 
written  by  himself,  which  I  read  among  the  papers  of  the  ex-President 
in  the  possession  of  his  daughter,  Mrs.  Patterson. 


CHAPTER   III 

The  Reign  of  Terkor — the  Capture  and  Death  of 

Booth 

The  assassination  of  Abraham  Lincoln  caused  a 
revulsion  of  popular  feeling  which  was  simply  terrific. 
The  people  of  the  North  were  just  indulging  in  a  uni- 
versal glorification  over  the  fall  of  the  Confederate 
capital  and  the  surrender  of  the  main  Confederate 
army.  In  every  city,  town,  village  and  hamlet  the 
joy-bells  were  ringing  and  the  sound  thereof  was 
borne  on  the  wings  of  the  wind  to  the  waste  places  of 
prairie,  mountain  and  inland  sea.  At  the  very  height 
of  the  jubilee,  the  dread  spectre  that  hitherto  had  kept 
its  haunts  in  the  guarded  palaces  of  kings  stalked  into 
the  open  portals  of  the  transatlantic  republic  and  laid 
a  death-dealing  hand  on  its  twice-chosen  head.  With 
an  abrupt  clang  the  joy-bells  ceased.  For  a  moment, 
a  silence  that  could  be  felt  wrapped  the  whole  wide 
land;  and,  then,  here  and  there  and  everywhere  arose 
the  cry  for  vengeance,  swelling  louder  and  louder  with 
every  passing  hour ; — a  vengeance  commensurate  with 
the  monstrosity  of  the  offence.  The  force  of  the 
reaction  in  the  country  was  exemplified  by  the  reign  of 
terror  which  set  in  at  the  federal  capital.  The  tidings 
of  the  ferocious  assault  on  the  Secretary  of  State 
coming  at  the  same  moment  drove  the  panic-stricken 
citizens  well-nigh  to  madness.     The  wildest  rumors 

(55) 


56  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

found  ready  credence ;  the  bloody  villains  were  still  at 
work;  the  Vice  President,  the  other  members  of  the 
cabinet,  the  general  of  the  army  were  doomed ;  the  gov- 
ernment was  to  be  left  without  a  head  and  the  rebel 
forces  were  about  to  march  on  the  defenceless  city  to 
be  welcomed  by  their  secret  allies — the  aiders  and 
abettors  of  the  assassins. 

At  this  harrowing  crisis  the  reins  of  government 
dropped  into  the  hands  of  the  Secretary  of  War ;  and 
a  pilot  more  unfit  to  ride  the  whirlwind  and  direct  the 
storm  than  Edwin  M.  Stanton  could  not  have  been 
found.  It  is  true,  he  "never  wanted  energy";  but  in 
qualities  no  less  essential  he  was  lamentably  deficient. 
Bellicose  in  demeanor  as  he  habitually  was,  in  moments 
of  storm  and  stress  he  was  apt  to  lose  his  head. 
Thickcoming  apprehensions  overclouded  his  perception 
of  the  real  facts  of  a  case;  he  would  boil  over  with 
rage  whenever  the  course  of  affairs  did  not  run  to  his 
liking;  so  that  a  rational  and  equitable  judgment  was 
the  one  thing  he  could  not  keep  cool  long  enough  to 
form.  Grant  said  of  him:  "He  cared  nothing  for  the 
feelings  of  others.  In  fact,  it  seemed  pleasanter  to 
him  to  disappoint  than  to  gratify.  He  felt  no  hesita- 
tion in  assuming  the  functions  of  the  Executive  or  in 
acting  without  advising  with  him.  The  secretary  was 
very  timid  and  it  was  impossible  for  him  to  avoid 
interfering  with  the  armies  covering  the  capital.  He 
could  see  our  weakness,  but  he  could  not  see  that  the 
enemy  was  in  danger.  The  enemy  would  not  have 
been  in  danger  if  Mr.  Stanton  had  been  in  the  field."* 

*  Mem.  of  Grant,  II,  536-7. 


THE   EEIGN   OF   TERROR  57 

Over-anxiety  for  the  safety  of  his  own  headquarters 
drove  him  to  denounce  McClellan's  reluctance  to  give 
battle  until  he  was  sure  of  victory  as  treachery  to  his 
own  soldiers  and  collusion  with  the  foe.  The  very  first 
step  to  be  taken  in  the  present  crisis  was  to  calm  the 
terrors  of  the  people ;  and  here  was  a  leader  who  could 
not  calm  his  own.  Instead  of  endeavoring  to  mollify 
the  prevailing  madness,  every  movement  he  made 
seemed  designed  to  keep  it  up  to  the  highest  pitch. 
Before  the  breath  was  out  of  the  body  of  his  chief, 
nay,  before  he  knew  who  the  assassin  was  and  whether 
the  Seward  massacre  was  the  work  of  the  same  hand 
or  another,  he  rushed  to  the  conclusion  that  the  two- 
fold assassination  was  the  outcome — still  incomplete — 
of  a  great  conspiracy  stretching  from  Canada  to  Rich- 
mond, the  source  of  which  was  the  president  and 
cabinet  of  the  Southern  Confederacy.  This  conclusion 
he  fastened  in  the  minds  of  the  inhabitants  of  the 
District  by  placing  guards  around  the  residences  of 
his  colleagues  and  his  own,  and  declaring  the  capital 
in  a  state  of  siege ;  and  he  spread  it  broadcast  over  the 
country  and  across  the  ocean  by  telegraph.  In  this 
savage  mood  he  ordered  the  confiscation  of  the  build- 
ing which  was  stained,  as  it  were,  with  the  life-blood 
of  the  nation  and  the  arrest  of  every  human  being 
employed  in  its  service;  and,  while  this  decree  was 
being  carried  into  effect,  he  set  in  motion  the  ma- 
chinery of  his  department  to  bring  to  justice  the  actual 
perpetrator  and  his  accessories  before  and  after  the 
fact  who,  he  believed,  were  without  number  and  scat- 
tered all  over  the  continent.    Beside  the  regular  police 


58  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

force  of  the  city,  there  were  subject  to  his  orders  the 
military  police  attached  to  the  provost-marshal's 
office,  the  officers  and  privates  stationed  at  various 
points  in  the  city  and  in  the  surrounding  camps,  bar- 
racks and  fortifications,  the  retainers  of  the  United 
States  Secret  Service  and  the  corps  of  detectives  and 
spies  attached  to  the  Bureau  of  Military  Justice.  Of 
these  forces — more  or  less  emulous  of  each  other  in 
the  ordinary  discharge  of  their  duties — every  man  had 
caught  in  its  worst  form  the  epidemic  of  credulity  and 
suspicion  and,  being  stimulated  by  the  hope  of  pro- 
motion and  the  large  rewards  placarded  in  all  direc- 
tions, plunged  into  a  furious  competition — multiplying 
arrests,  extorting  confessions,  ferreting  out  witnesses 
and  haling  them  before  the  nearest  tribunal.  A 
special  commission,  composed  of  three  colonels,  sat 
during  the  night  at  General  Augur's  headquarters  to 
receive  reports,  take  testimony,  and  follow  up  every 
clue ;  and  in  the  back  parlor  of  the  house  in  which  the 
President  lay  the  Secretary  of  War,  with  the  chief 
justice  of  the  District,  extemporized  an  investigation 
of  his  own.  The  actors,  employees  and  spectators, 
hurried  through  the  crowd  outside  to  be  sworn  before 
him,  were  in  such  a  state  of  bewilderment  that  those  of 
them  who  expressed  the  belief  that  the  figure  they  had 
caught  a  glimpse  of  was  that  of  the  well-known  actor, 
declined  to  make  a  positive  affirmation ;  and  it  was  not 
imtil  he  was  about  to  be  summoned  to  the  adjoining 
chamber  by  the  imminence  of  death  that  the  secretary 
was  able  to  announce  in  a  despatch  to  General  Dix  at 
New  York,  ''with  reasonable  certainty,"  that  the  mur- 


THE   REIGN   OF   TERROR  59 

derer  of  Lincoln  was  John  Wilkes  Booth  and  the 
assailant  of  Seward  was  an  accomplice  not  yet  iden- 
tified.* Between  the  hours  of  twelve  and  one  that 
night,  a  horse,  blind  in  one  eye,  was  found  standing  on 
a  by-road  leading  to  Camp  Barry,  three  quarters  of 
a  mile  east  of  the  capital, — riderless,  saddled  and 
bridled,  the  sweat  pouring  off  of  him,  quivering  in 
every  nervef — and  was  taken  to  Augur's  headquarters, 
where,  shortly  afterward,  the  saddle  and  bridle  were 
identified  by  a  liveryman  as  having  been  in  the  pos- 
session of  Atzerodt  two  days  before  when  he  rode 
away  from  the  stable  where  the  horse  had  been  kept 
on  sale  for  some  days.  This  witness  also  testified 
before  the  special  commission,  sitting  there,  that  he 
had  let  the  horse  ridden  by  Herold,  had  attempted  to 
intercept  the  rider  on  the  avenue,  had  followed  on  his 
track  as  far  as  the  Navy  Yard  bridge  where  the  guard, 
after  informing  him  that  two  horsemen  one  after  the 
other  had  crossed  a  short  time  before,  refused  him  the 
same  privilege  and  he  was  compelled  to  relinquish  his 
pursuit.  He  revealed,  besides,  the  movements  of 
Atzerodt  the  same  night  as  heretofore  described. 
AVhereupon  a  dash  was  made  on  all  the  livery  stables 
in  Washington,  the  proprietor  from  whom  Booth  hired 
his  fleet-footed  mare  found,  and  the  partnership  in  the 
keeping  and  use  of  horses  that  had  subsisted  during 

*  See  Note  I  to  chapter  in  Appendix.  Also,  Baker 's  Secret  Service, 
529 J  Stanton's  telegrams  in  N.  Y.  Herald  of  Saturday  the  15th; 
Stewart's  testimony  on  C,  T.,  Poore,  II,  70,  79,  81;  Ferguson's,  I,  191. 

tC.  T.,  Toffey's  testimony,  Poore,  I,  365,  418;   S.  T.,  231. 


60  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

the  pendency  of  the  plot  to  capture  between  Booth  and 
Surratt  brought  to  light.* 

The  emergence  of  the  name  of  the  youthful  rider 
on  the  underground  route  in  close  connection  with  the 
arch-assassin  seemed  to  furnish  a  solution  of  a  problem 
that  was  puzzling  the  authorities.  The  perpetrator 
of  the  butchery  at  the  Seward  mansion  had  left  behind 
him,  besides  his  hat  and  his  weapons,  a  well-marked 
trail,  and  even  the  horse  he  rode  away  on  was  in  the 
hands  of  the  soldiery;  but  the  man  himself  had  dis- 
appeared as  though  he  had  sunk  into  the  earth.  At 
first,  indeed,  it  was  thought  that  the  murderer  of  Lin- 
coln might  have  committed  both  assaults,  and,  at  the 
moment  when  it  came  to  light  that  Atzerodt  had  been 
in  possession  of  the  one-eyed  charger,  it  was  even  con- 
jectured that  the  wretched  German,  who  displayed 
such  distaste  for  the  shedding  of  blood  in  the  case  of 
the  Vice  President,  had  distanced  every  competitor  in 
that  line  in  the  case  of  the  Secretary  of  State.f  But, 
in  the  face  of  evidence  pointing  to  so  probable  a  con- 
spirator as  Surratt,  such  baseless  surmises  instantly 
fell  to  the  ground.  The  real  guilty  party,  being  a 
total  stranger  to  the  capital,  had  been  seen  or  heard 
of  by  no  one  outside  of  the  Surratt  house  where  he 
had  been  hidden,  whereas  Surratt  enjoyed  a  large  circle 
of  acquaintances  in  Washington,  his  person  could  be 
readily  identified,  he  fitted  into  the  vacant  role  with 
providential  nicety  and  his  antecedents  furnished 
plausible  evidence  of  his  guilt.     So  speedy  and  un- 

*  C.  T.,  Poore,  I,  326,  173 ;  II,  94. 

iN.  Y.  Herald  of  April  15,  1865;  Poore,  I,  377;  II,  22;  S.  T.,  442. 


THE   REIGN   OF    TERROR  61 

doubting  was  the  decision  of  the  authorities  that,  in 
the  small  hours  of  Saturday  morning,  a  squad  of 
detectives  surrounded  the  boarding  house  and  searched 
every  room  in  it ;  announcing  to  the  awakened  inmates 
that  John  Wilkes  Booth  had  murdered  the  President 
and  Jolm  Surratt  the  Secretary  of  State,  exhibiting  at 
the  same  time  the  bow  of  Lincoln's  cravat  spotted  with 
blood.  The  frightened  household  assured  the  officers 
that  Surratt  had  not  been  home  for  two  weeks,  his 
mother  stating  that  he  was  in  Montreal  whence  she 
had  received  a  letter  from  him  the  day  just  past,  dated 
on  the  twelfth,  and  that  she  had  last  seen  Booth  at  two 
o'clock  of  the  previous  afternoon.  Ordering  the  two 
male  boarders — Wiechmann  and  Holahan — to  report 
at  headquarters  at  nine  o'clock,  the  party  left  empty- 
handed  and  dissatisfied.*  In  addition  to  this  pro- 
visional identification  of  Surratt  as  an  accomplice  with 
Herold  and  Atzerodt,  another  discovery  was  made 
which  put  the  authorities  on  the  track  of  two  more. 
In  Booth's  trunk  at  the  National  Hotel  was  found  the 
letter  written  by  Arnold  withdrawing  from  the  plot  to 
capture  and  advising  a  reference  to  Richmond  before 
further  action ; — an  item  of  testimony  sufficient,  in  the 
prevalent  heat  of  pursuit,  to  settle  the  complicity  of 
the  writer  as  well  as  that  of  his  comrade  O'Laughlin, 
of  whom  he  made  mention.  The  letter  did  more — 
certain  of  its  phrases  were  pounced  upon  by  Stanton 
as  confirmation  strong  of  the  colossal  conspiracy  which 
had  already  become  a  fixed  idea  in  his  mind.f 

*S.  T.,  394-5;  id.,  698. 

t  C.  T.,  Poore,  I,  419 ;  N.  Y.  Herald,  ut  sup.     See  letter  of  Arnold  in 
Appendix,  Note  VII  to  Chap.  I. 


62  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

Thus  passed  this  night  of  dread — its  last  dark  hours 
made  darker  by  a  heavy  rain.  As  the  reluctant  morn- 
ing broke,  the  death  of  the  President  extinguished  any 
glimmer  of  hope  lingering  in  the  depth  of  despair. 
At  about  nine  o'clock  his  body  was  inclosed  in  a  tem- 
porary coffin  and  carried  through  silent  crowds  stand- 
ing in  the  streets,  between  buildings  already  black  with 
crape,  to  the  White  House  and  laid  in  the  East  Eoom. 
The  next  day  an  autopsy  was  performed,  which  dem- 
onstrated that  there  could  have  been  no  gleam  of  con- 
sciousness after  the  fatal  shot — the  ball  entering  the 
back  of  the  head  to  the  left  of  the  median  line  and 
below  the  line  of  the  ear,  plowing  its  way  in  an  upward 
and  diagonal  course  through  the  brain  and  lodging 
within  half  an  inch  of  the  right  eye,  the  force  of  the 
impact  fracturing  the  orbits  of  both  organs  of  vision.* 
The  whole  population  seemed  absorbed  in  the  celebra- 
tion of  the  obsequies  of  the  martyred  Chief  Magistrate. 
All  civil  business  was  suspended.  The  new-made 
President  took  the  oath  of  office  with  scant  ceremony 
or  none.  On  Wednesday,  amid  the  tolling  of  bells 
and  the  discharge  of  minute  guns,  a  resplendent 
procession  escorted  the  funeral  car  to  the  capitol, 
where  the  open  coffin  lay  upon  a  catafalque  in  the 
rotunda  until  the  night  of  the  succeeding  day — thou- 
sands passing  by  to  gaze  once  more  on  the  face  of  the 
man  to  whose  memory  they  did  homage  as  the  friend 
of  all  the  people  without  distinction  of  color,  state  or 
section.  Then  the  immortal  dead  was  borne  away  to 
his  late  home  over  the  same  route  the  son  of  Illinois 

*  See  Note  II  to  chapter  in  Appendix. 


THE   REIGN   OF   TERROR  63 

traversed  coming  to  "Washington  as  President-elect  to 
take  the  oath  of  office. 

But  even  tlie  lamentation  of  the  whole  nation 
could  not  interrupt  for  an  instant  the  pursuit  of 
the  principal  in  the  crime  that  had  caused  it.  A 
fiend  in  human  shape,  after  striking  down  in  the  face 
of  a  crowded  audience  the  chief  of  the  state,  had 
effected  his  escape  from  the  place  of  blood ;  and,  then, 
through  unaccountable  negligence,  had  slipped  out  of 
the  intrenched  capital.  Whither  had  he  vanished? 
To  the  guard  at  the  Navy  Yard  bridge,  a  horseman 
whom  he  allowed  to  cross  at  about  the  hour  of  eleven 
had  given  the  name  of  Booth;  and  a  horseman  who 
followed  at  the  heels  of  the  first  had  been  identified 
as  Herold  by  the  man  whom  this  Dogberry  of  a  ser- 
geant— vigilant  at  the  wrong  moment — stayed  in  his 
pursuit.*  A  brigade  of  infantry,  a  thousand  cavalry 
and  more  than  two  hundred  detectives  poured  over 
into  lower  Maryland,  reaching  Surrattsville  at  eight 
o'clock  Saturday  morning  and  Bryantown  in  the  after- 
noon, spreading  far  and  wide  the  tidings  of  the  assas- 
sination and  the  probable  direction  of  the  assassin's 
flight,  but  without  hitting  upon  any  further  trace.f  Fol- 
lowing the  same  trail  the  detectives  who  had  searched 
the  house  in  H  Street — taking  the  two  male  boarders 
with  them — halted  at  the  Surratt  tavern  at  about  noon, 
and  one  of  them,  having  known  the  landlord  when  on 
the  Washington  police,  plied  him  with  promises  of  re- 
ward to  put  them  upon  the  track  of  the  fugitives ;  but 

*  Poore,  I,  251. 
t  Baker,  530. 


64  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

Lloyd,  though  he  had  already  heard  of  the  assassina- 
tion, swore  that  no  persons  could  have  passed  that  way 
during  the  night  without  his  knowledge,  following  up 
his  denial  by  starting  the  party  on  a  road  which  led 
them  back  to  Washington  by  the  evening.  There,  the 
baffled  band  struck  a  fresh  scent.  Wiechmann,  certain 
that  Surratt  was  not  in  Washington  on  the  fatal  night, 
had  seen  in  a  newspaper  of  the  morning  that  the  assail- 
ant of  Seward  wore  an  overcoat  similar  to  one  worn  by 
Atzerodt,  and  he  led  the  officers  to  search  the  Penn- 
sylvania House  and,  the  next  day,  to  travel  to  Balti- 
more in  vain  pursuit  of  that  conspirator.  But  the 
room  in  the  Kirkwood  House  having  been  broken  into 
and  the  weapons  concealed  there  found,  showed  that 
Atzerodt 's  intended  victim  was  not  the  Secretary  of 
State  but  the  Vice  President,  and  the  authorities  were 
thrown  back  upon  the  original  assumption  that  the 
missing  culprit  could  be  no  other  than  Surratt,  whose 
home  they  ordered  to  be  seized  and  for  whose  arrest 
and  extradition  they  despatched  the  detectives,  with 
Wiechmann  and  Holahan,  to  Canada,  as  soon  as  they 
came  back  from  Baltimore.* 

At  about  half -past  eleven  o'clock  that  night  (Mon- 
day) another  raid  was  made  upon  the  house  in  H 
Street.  The  four  ladies,  to  whom  the  household  was 
reduced,  were  huddled  together  in  the  parlor,  destitute 
of  male  protection  and  a  prey  to  undefined  appre- 
hensions. In  response  to  the  solemn  salutation  of  the 
presumed  leader  of  the  invaders  to  the  landlady:  "I 

*  Wiechmann  in  Poore,  I,  377  and  S.  T.,  396-7  j  Clarvoe,  S.  T.,  701; 
Lee  in  Poore,  I,  62. 


THE   KEIGN   OF    TERROR  65 

come  to  arrest  you  and  all  of  your  house,'*  there  was 
nothing  to  do  but  with  trembling  fingers  to  don  their 
outdoor  apparel  and  prepare  to  depart.  Just  as  the 
officer  in  charge  was  about  to  pass  them  out  to  the 
carriage  that  had  been  sent  for  to  take  them  to  General 
Augur's  headquarters,  a  ring  was  heard  and,  the  door 
being  opened,  a  man  in  the  guise  of  a  day  laborer  stood 
upon  the  threshold.  A  sleeve  of  a  woolen  undershirt 
was  drawn  over  his  head,  a  pickaxe  was  on  his  shoul- 
der and  his  boots,  reaching  high  up  over  his  trousers, 
were  splashed  with  mud.  He  hesitated  a  moment  and 
then  said  he  came  to  see  Mrs.  Surratt.  The  officer 
pulled  him  inside  and  seated  him  in  a  chair  behind  the 
open  door,  while  two  of  his  men  passed  the  ladies  out, 
Mrs.  Surratt  muttering  a  few  words  which  the  officer 
did  not  catch.  After  they  had  gone,  the  intruder  was 
put  to  the  question.  He  said  he  was  to  dig  a  gutter  for 
Mrs.  Surratt  and  called  to  see  at  what  hour  he  should 
go  to  work  in  the  morning ;  that  he  was  twenty  years 
old,  had  left  the  South  in  February  and  taken  the  oath 
of  allegiance  to  the  United  States,  pulling  out  a  form 
signed  ''Lewis  Payne,  Fauquier  County,  Va."  The 
officer  put  him  under  arrest  at  once  and,  as  soon  as  the 
carriage  returned,  sent  him  to  follow  the  ladies;  him- 
self and  others  of  the  posse  remaining  until  three 
o'clock  in  the  morning  searching  the  house  for  in- 
criminating documents.*  At  her  arrival  at  head- 
quarters, Mrs.  Surratt  was  taken  into  an  inner  room 
where  the  special  commission  was  sitting,  and  exam- 
ined, her  companions  being  left  in  the  antechamber. 

*  See  Note  in  Appendix  (III  to  Chap.). 
5 


66  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

Wlien  the  rough-looking  stranger  was  brought  in,  not 
one  of  the  persons  present  was  able  to  say  that  he  or 
she  had  ever  set  eyes  on  him  before.  A  conjecture 
that  he  might  be  Surratt  so  shocked  that  young  man's 
sister  that  it  was  necessary  to  summon  her  mother  to 
quiet  her;  and  it  was  not  until  the  sleeve  was  pulled 
off  his  head  that  Miss  Fitzpatrick  recognized  him  as  a 
transient  guest  at  the  boarding  house  some  time  in 
March,  passing  under  the  name  of  ''Wood."  After 
the  examination  of  Mrs.  Surratt  was  over  (its  con- 
tents have  never  seen  the  light),  she  with  her  boarders 
were  carried  off  to  Carroll  prison;  and  the  bellboy  at 
Seward's,  being  routed  out  of  bed  and  brought  to 
headquarters,  declared  in  the  most  positive  terms  that 
the  bedraggled  newcomer  was  the  fiery-eyed  desperado 
who  had  made  a  shambles  of  the  home  of  the  Secretary 
of  State.* 

On  the  same  eventful  Monday,  O'Laughlin  at  Balti- 
more surrendered  himself  to  the  ofiicers  who  he  was 
told  were  in  search  of  him,  and  Arnold  was  appre- 
hended at  Old  Point  Comfort,  the  latter  acknowledging 
his  participation  in  the  abortive  plot  to  capture,  but 
disclaiming  any  knowledge  of  a  design  to  kill.f  They 
were  forthwith  brought  to  Washington  and  together 
with  Payne  confined  in  the  hold  of  one  of  the  monitors 
lying  in  midstream  abreast  of  the  Navy  Yard,  and 
loaded  with  double  irons.  Spangler,  also,  having  been 
selected  as  the  employee  most  likely  to  have  assisted 
Booth  in  his  preparations  and  in  his  escape,  was  sent 


* 


C.  T.,  Poore,  II,  31. 
t  Id.,  118,  230,  431,  434. 


THE    REIGN   OF   TERROR  67 

to  keep  them  company,  to  be  followed  by  Atzerodt,  wlio 
was  aroused  from  slmnber  in  the  early  hours  of  Thurs- 
day at  the  house  of  his  cousin,  the  officer  making  the 
arrest  adding  the  man  who  sheltered  him  to  the  list  of 
prisoners  who  were  considered  secure  only  when 
lodged  below  the  surface  of  the  Potomac* 

Still,  of  the  arch-assassin  no  further  trace!  The 
Secretary  of  War  (on  the  twentieth)  issued  a  proc- 
lamation, headed :  ' '  $100,000  Reward !  The  Murderer 
of  our  Beloved  President  is  still  at  large!",  offering 
**  $50,000  for  his  apprehension,  in  addition  to  any 
reward  offered  by  municipal  authorities  or  state  execu- 
tives" (aggregating  over  $100,000  more);  *' $25,000 
for  the  apprehension  of  John  H.  Surratt,  one  of 
Booth's  accomplices;  $25,000  for  the  apprehension  of 
David  C.  Herold,  another  of  Booth's  accomplices; 
liberal  rewards  for  any  information  that  shall  tend 
to  the  arrest  of  either  of  the  above-named  criminals 
or  their  accomplices";  warning  **all  persons  harbor- 
ing or  secreting  said  persons  or  either  of  them,  or 
aiding  or  assisting  in  their  concealment  or  escape" 
that  they  ''will  be  treated  as  accomplices  in  the  mur- 
der of  the  President  and  the  attempted  assassination 
of  the  Secretary  of  State,  and  shall  be  subject  to 
trial  before  a  military  commission  and  the  punishment 
of  death";  and  closing  as  follows:  "Let  the  stain  of 
innocent  blood  be  removed  from  the  land  by  the  arrest 
and  punishment  of  the  murderers.  All  good  citizens 
are  exhorted  to  aid  public  justice  on  this  occasion. 
Every  one  should  consider  his  own  conscience  charged 

*Poore,  I,  357;  II,  515. 


68  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

with  this  solemn  duty  and  rest  neither  night  or  day 
nntil  it  be  accomplished."* 

And  this  injunction  was  obeyed  to  the  letter.  The 
parties  conducting  the  search,  especially,  gave  them- 
selves no  rest  night  or  day.  Persons  whom  they  sus- 
pected of  screening  the  object  of  their  pursuit  under- 
went a  bitter  experience.  Lloyd,  still  persisting  in  his 
denial,  was  locked  up  in  an  extemporized  guardhouse 
and  subjected  to  severe  military  pressure.  Half  mad 
with  terror  and  drink,  he  broke  down,  confessing  that 
at  midnight  on  the  fatal  Friday  Booth  and  Herold 
stopped  in  front  of  his  tavern,  Booth  with  a  broken 
leg  remaining  on  horseback  and  Herold  coming  in  for 
whiskey  and  for  the  two  carbines  concealed  in  the  house 
on  the  collapse  of  the  plot  to  capture.  As  they  rode 
away,  Booth  exclaimed,  "I  have  murdered  the  Presi- 
dent," and  Herold,  "I  have  fixed  Seward."  This 
tardy  revelation  settled  Lloyd's  case  with  the  officer 
who  had  him  in  charge,  and  he  was  sent  on  to  Colonel 
Wells  at  Bryantown,  who,  after  putting  him  on  the 
rack  again,  remanded  him  to  the  prisons  of  Washing- 
ton. Stopping  at  his  home  on  the  way,  the  wretched 
man  shouted  for  his  prayer  book,  crying  "I  am  to  be 
shot !     That  ^dle  woman  has  ruined  me ! "  and  in  this 

*  The  copy  produced  by  Stanton  before  the  Jud.  Com.  H.  E.  Iklareh 
1,  1867,  differs  from  the  one  produced  on  G.  T.,  as  given  in  Pitman  185 
and  in  Poore  in  the  Introduction,  by  including  Surratt  instead  of 
Atzerodt.  See  facsimile  in  Oldroyd  185  and  in  "Four  Lincoln  Con- 
spiracies" in  Century  Mag.  for  April,  1896.  For  additional  amounts 
of  rewards  see  Proc.  in  Baker's  book,  526;  and  note  to  article,  "Pur- 
suit and  Death  of  Booth,"  in  Century,  January,  1890.  Com.  Council 
of  Washington  offered  $20,000;  Baker,  $10,000;  3  States,  $25,000  each. 


THE   REIGN  OF   TERROR  69 

besotted  condition  he  was  carried  to  the  capital,  where 
even  in  his  cell  the  officers  in  charge  gave  him  no  rest.* 
Having  thus  at  last  struck  the  trail  at  Surrattsville 
and  discovered,  besides,  that  their  prey  was  incapaci- 
tated from  much  farther  flight,  the  pursuers  pressed 
onward  with  renewed  vigor  until,  at  the  residence  of 
Dr.  Mudd,  they  were  met  by  information  still  more 
satisfactory.  According  to  the  doctor's  statement,  on 
Saturday,  before  daybreak,  two  horsemen  rode  up  to 
his  door,  one  of  them  so  much  disabled  that  he  had  to 
be  carried  into  the  house;  an  examination  disclosed  a 
transverse  fracture  of  the  outer  bone  of  the  leftf  leg, 
caused,  as  the  companion  of  the  wounded  man  stated, 
by  a  fall  from  his  horse ;  the  doctor  set  the  leg  as  well 
as  he  could  with  splints  cut  from  a  bandbox,  receiving 
twenty-five  dollars  for  the  service;  after  dinner  the 
younger  man,  having  left  the  patient  in  the  upper 
room  where  they  had  rested  in  the  meantime,  went  with 
the  doctor  to  get  a  carriage  in  order  that  they  might 
proceed  on  their  journey,  but  finding  none  the  youth 
returned  to  the  house,  the  doctor  riding  on  to  Bryan- 
town  and  its  vicinity  to  make  his  professional  calls; 
on  his  return  at  about  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon 
both  men  were  gone  with  their  horses,  a  rude  crutch 
having  been  made  for  the  broken-legged  rider.  To 
the  rapid  fire  of  questions  poured  in  on  him,  the  doctor 
responded  that  both  men  were  strangers  to  him ;  one — 
a  mere  lad  in  appearance — he  was  positive  he  never 

*Poore,  II,  192,  215;  Lloyd's  testimony,  id.,  1,  115;  cf.  S.  T.,  290. 
7  There  is  some  discrepancy  as  to  this ;  but  the  boot  slit  open,  pre- 
served in  the  War  Office  is  a  left  boot.     Cf.  Baker,  Oldroyd  and  Mason. 


70  THE   EEIGN   OF   TEREOR 

saw  before,  the  other  he  had  glanced  at  in  the  dim  light 
of  the  upper  room  where  he  lay,  his  head  muffled  in 
a  shawl,  exhausted  from  fatigue,  faint  with  suffering, 
and  speechless ;  the  news  of  the  assassination  which  he 
heard  at  Bryantown  aroused  no  suspicion  in  his  mind 
until  he  learned  on  his  return  that  his  patient  had 
called  for  a  razor  and  shaved  off  his  moustache,  and 
his  wife  told  him  that  when  he  hobbled  down  stairs 
she  detected  that  his  whiskers  were  false.  Fired  by 
this  precious  intelligence  and,  in  their  eagerness  to 
be  gone  omitting  to  name  the  men  they  were  after,  the 
officers  plunged  ahead  along  the  route  which  the  doc- 
tor pointed  out  to  them,  confident  at  every  turn  of 
bringing  their  precious  quarry  to  bay.  But,  though 
they  scoured  every  nook  and  corner  of  the  vicinity,  the 
crippled  fugitive  could  not  be  traced.  A  watch  was 
set  at  every  ferry,  gunboats  were  sent  up  and  down 
the  river,  the  entire  territory  between  the  Patuxent 
and  the  Potomac  was  overrun ;  but  to  no  purpose.  On 
Friday  (21st)  the  baffled  detectives,  accompanied  by  a 
squad  of  cavalry,  went  back  in  no  favorable  mood  to 
the  dwelling  of  the  man  whom,  as  they  had  learned  in 
the  meantime.  Booth  had  visited  the  fall  before,  but 
who,  nevertheless,  after  binding  up  his  wounds,  had 
set  the  assassin  on  his  undiscoverable  way.  The  doc- 
tor, admitting  that  he  met  the  actor  at  the  time  stated, 
professed  to  detect  but  little  resemblance  between  the 
photographs  of  Booth  and  Herold,  thrust  in  his  face, 
and  the  two  wayfarers  who  had  invaded  his  household, 
thereby  giving  the  exasperated  detectives  the  impres- 
sion that  he  was  actuated  by  a  desire  to  shield  the 


THE    REIGN   OF    TERROR  71 

fugitives — an  impression  which  the  discovery  of  the 
boot  he  had  cut  off  the  broken  leg,  on  the  lining  of 

which  was  the  inscription  ' '  J.  Wilkes , ' '  deepened 

into  absolute  conviction.  Orders  soon  came  from 
headquarters  for  the  doctor's  arrest,  and  he  was 
whirled  away  from  his  farm,  his  practice,  his  wife  and 
four  little  ones  to  close  confinement  in  Carroll  prison.* 
His  incarceration,  however,  left  the  whereabouts  of 
the  disabled  assassin  still  shrouded  in  mystery.  The 
whole  country  seemed  to  writhe  in  an  agony  of  sus- 
pense. Was  it  within  the  bounds  of  possibility  that 
the  monumental  crime  of  the  age  should  pass  into  his- 
tory unavenged?  Astrologers  swept  the  heavens; 
mediums  called  spirits  from  the  vasty  deep;  clair- 
voyants lay  entranced  for  clues;  cranks,  quacks  and 
crack-brained  enthusiasts  swarmed.  On  street  cor- 
ners hysterical  women  overheard  blood-curdling  collo- 
quies and,  in  every  pallid,  blackbrowed  stranger  under 
a  sombrero,  scented  an  assassin.  Letters  poured 
through  the  post  office  marking  the  precise  spot  where 
the  fugitive  lay  hid  and  offering  to  deliver  him  to  the 
ministers  of  justice  for  a  consideration.  Young  men 
saw  visions  and  old  men  dreamed  dreams.  To  fur- 
nish evidence  was  to  earn  a  crown  of  glory;  to  be  a 
witness  for  the  state  was  to  take  one's  place  among 
the  heroes  of  the  age.  And,  distancing  every  runner 
in  the  headlong  race,  was  the  detective — both  of  the 
police    and   of    the    soldiery — for    whom   the    unpre- 

*  See  testimony  on  C.  T.,  Poore,  I,  258,  273,  301,  294;  Life  of  Mudd 
by  daughter,  statements  of  Mudd  and  wife,  p.  42;  letter  to  President 
Johnson,  148;  and  passim. 


72  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

cedented  panic  was  indeed  a  godsend.  Swelling  tho 
hue  and  cry,  treading  on  each  other's  heels,  crossing 
and  confusing  each  other's  tracks — far  and  wide  they 
sped,  panting  for  the  enormous  reward  set  before 
them.  From  Boston,  from  New  York,  from  Balti- 
more, to  the  overcrowded  capital  they  came.  The 
prisons  overflowed — full  of  ''suspects" — not  conspira- 
tors alone,  but  their  relatives,  friends,  acquaintances 
and  persons  having  had  dealings  with  them ;  proprie- 
tors of  theatres  and  their  employees;  actors  from  the 
north,  the  east  and  the  west;  livery-stable  keepers, 
telegraph  operators,  blockade  runners,  male  and 
female ;  rebel  scouts  and  spies ;  whole  households  with 
their  menservants  and  maidservants,  black  and  white, 
and  the  stranger  within  their  gates.  To  use  the  lan- 
guage of  General  Ewing,  the  counsel  for  Dr.  Mudd: 
**The  very  frenzy  of  madness  ruled  the  hour.  Reason 
was  swallowed  up  in  patriotic  passion,  and  a  feverish 
and  intense  excitement  prevailed  most  unfavorable  to 
a  calm,  correct  hearing  and  truthful  repetition  of  what 
was  said,  especially  by  the  suspected.  Again  and 
again  the  accused  was  catechised  by  detectives,  each 
vieing  with  the  other  as  to  which  should  make  the  most 
important  discoveries,  and  each  making  an  examina- 
tion with  a  preconceived  opinion  of  guilt,  and  with  an 
eager  desire,  if  not  determination,  to  find  in  what 
might  be  said  the  proofs  of  guilt.  Again,  the  witnesses 
testified  under  the  strong  stimulus  of  a  promised  re- 
ward for  information  leading  to  arrest  and  followed 
by  convictions."*     On  the  twenty- third  of  April,  as  if 

*  Pitman,  329. 


THE   REIGN   OF   TERROR  73 

he  could  lay  bare  the  hiding  place  of  the  principal  by- 
heaping  torture  on  his  fettered  accessories,  the  war 
minister  issued  an  order:  "That  the  prisoners  on 
board  iron-clads  .  .  .  for  better  security  against  con- 
versation shall  have  a  canvass  bag  put  over  the  head 
of  each  and  tied  around  the  neck,  with  a  hole  for 
proper  breathing  and  eating,  but  not  seeing,  and  that 
Payne  be  secured  to  prevent  self-destruction. ''* 

At  this  juncture,  that  veteran  sleuth,  La  Fayette  C. 
Baker,  chief  of  the  national  detective  police — as  Deus 
ex  machina — descended  into  the  arena.  Transferred 
from  the  state  to  the  War  Department  on  the  accession 
of  Stanton  to  the  cabinet,  this  indefatigable  public 
servant  won  the  confidence  of  his  new  master  by  the 
utter  disregard  of  due  process  of  law  with  which  he 
suppressed  freedom  of  speech  concerning  the  war. 
Summoned  from  New  York,  where  he  was  on  duty  at 
the  moment,  the  secretary  placed  at  his  command  the 
entire  resources  of  the  department,  with  the  injunc- 
tion: ''Baker,  go  to  work.  My  whole  dependence  is 
upon  you."  Baker  needed  no  urging;  but,  with  the 
celerity  and  thoroughgoingness  on  which  he  plumed 
himself,  went  to  work  after  a  fashion  of  his  own.  In 
the  first  place,  with  a  contemptuous  indifference  to  the 
meagre  results  already  attained,  he  resolved  to  start 
afresh — stipulating  for  the  sole  charge  of  the  investi- 
gation and  laying  down  a  plan  of  operations  so  as  to 
make  sure  of  the  whole  credit  of  ultimate  success  and 
also  of  every  dollar  of  the  exceeding  great  reward. 

*  Oldroyd,  84. 


74  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

The  three  counties  lying  between  the  Patuxent  and  the 
Potomac  having  been  rummaged  in  every  direction,  he 
hazarded  nothing  in  deciding  that  the  aim  of  the  fugi- 
tives must  have  been  to  cross  the  latter  river  so  as  to 
land  at  some  spot  on  the  Virginia  shore  as  near  as 
possible  to  the  Rappahannock,  to  cross  which  river 
and  turn  west  to  the  mountains  of  Kentucky  or  Ten- 
nessee was  the  only  way  of  escape,  the  whole  of  south- 
eastern Virginia  being  virtually  in  the  possession  of 
the  Union  forces.  Accordingly,  Baker's  first  move 
was  to  send,  on  Sunday  the  twenty-third,  two  of  his 
men  (with  a  telegraph  operator  and  apparatus  fur- 
nished by  the  War  OfRce)  to  Port  Tobacco,  to  recon- 
noitre and  open  communications.  Immediately  on 
their  arrival  one  of  the  detectives  ran  across  an  old 
negro  who  stated  that,  on  Saturday  night,  near  Swan's 
Point,  he  saw  two  men  resembling  the  descriptions  of 
Booth  and  Herold,  one  of  them  lame,  entering  a  small 
boat  to  cross  the  river.  The  black  man  was  taken 
immediately  to  Washington  and  examined  by  Baker, 
with  the  result  that  an  application  was  made  to  Gen- 
eral Hancock,  the  commander  of  the  District,  for  a 
detachment  of  cavalry  numbering  twenty-five  men. 
This  force,  under  the  command  of  Lieutenant  Edward 
P.  Doherty,  reported  for  duty  at  the  headquarters  of 
Baker  in  the  afternoon  of  Monday  (the  24th)  and  was 
placed  under  the  leadership  of  two  of  Baker's  most 
experienced  subordinates — Everton  I.  Conger  and 
Lewis  Byron  Baker— whom  their  chief,  having  traced 
on  a  map  a  line  he  divined  the  assassins  had  taken 
after  crossing  into  Virginia,  ordered  to  proceed  at 


CAPTURE  AND  DEATH  OF  BOOTH    75 

once  to  Belle  Plain  on  the  Virginia  side  of  the  Poto- 
mac, seventy  miles  below,  and  from  that  point  prose- 
cute the  search  throughout  the  whole  region  until  they 
reached  Port  Conway  on  this  side  of  the  Rappahan- 
nock. The  party  sailed  on  the  steamboat  John  S.  Ide 
— set  apart  for  this  ser\dce  by  the  government — at 
four  o'clock  and  disembarked  at  Belle  Plain  at  ten. 
The  remainder  of  that  night  and  the  following  day 
until  three  or  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  were  spent 
in  harrying  the  twenty-five  or  thirty  miles  of  territory 
intervening,  but  it  was  not  until  they  arrived  at  the 
designated  terminus  of  their  route  that  they  met  the 
first  unmistakable  traces  of  the  objects  of  their  tireless 
pursuit.* 

Here  let  us  leave  them  wliile  we  turn  back  to  follow 
the  course  of  the  fugitives  up  to  this  moment,  as  that 
course  was  afterwards  revealed. 

So  skilfully  was  the  assassin's  plan  of  flight  adapted 
to  his  physical  make-up  and  habits  of  life,  that,  had  it 
not  been  for  a  mishap  which  was  wholly  fortuitous,  he 
would  have  crossed  the  Potomac  not  later  than  Satur- 
day night  and  put  himself  beyond  reach  of  immediate 
pursuit,  if  not  of  eventual  capture.  But,  providen- 
tially as  we  are  taught  to  say,  the  actor's  spur  caught 
in  the  flag  of  the  country  whose  ruler  he  had  just  slain, 
and,  noted  as  he  was  for  his  extraordinary  leaps  on  the 
stage,  this  once  he  tripped,  and  in  so  doing  broke  liis 
leg.  That  he  was  able  to  rise  upon  his  feet,  fly  across 
the  boards,  mount  his  steed  and  endure  the  tortures  of 

•Baker's  History  of  U.  S.  Secret  Service,  527,  532. 


76  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

the  mad  gallop  on  the  city  pavements — the  splintered 
bone  ''tearing  his  flesh  at  every  jump" — was  a  marvel 
of  fortitude.  Before  he  got  over  the  ten  miles  to 
Surrattsville,  he  was  forced  to  exchange  his  fleet-footed 
mare  for  Herold's  roan,  which  was  a  saddle  horse  of 
the  "r acker"  variety.*  In  search  of  surgical  aid  he 
diverged  seven  or  eight  miles  out  of  his  direct  route 
and  lost  twelve  hours  of  daylight  before  he  could 
venture  to  resume  his  hobble  towards  the  river  of  his 
hopes.  He  lost  his  way  in  the  barren  marshes  to  the 
south  of  Dr.  Mudd*s  and  was  rescued  by  a  negro  who 
carried  him  in  his  wagon  about  fifteen  miles  to  the 
residence  of  Samuel  Cox — a  prominent  sympathizer 
with  the  South,  who  in  all  probability  had  been  cog- 
nizant of  the  plot  to  capture — where  he  was  within 
four  or  five  miles  of  the  Potomac.  Here,  in  the  early 
hours  of  Sunday,  his  forty-five  mile  race  for  life  came 
to  an  end.  He  could  go  no  farther,  either  by  horse, 
wagon  or  afoot.  For  thirty  hours  he  had  been  upon 
the  rack  and  he  could  endure  the  incessant  agony 
no  longer.  The  master  of  the  house,  on  whose  thresh- 
hold  he  lay,  having  heard  of  the  terrible  event  of 
Friday  night,  refused  to  admit  stragglers  at  such  an 
hour ;  and,  with  his  companion  and  the  horses,  he  was 
driven  to  seek  such  shelter  as  he  could  find  in  the  open 
air.  After  sunrise.  Cox,  in  view  of  the  helpless  plight 
of  one  of  the  outlaws,  relented  so  far  as  to  conduct 
them  to  the  centre  of  an  almost  impenetrable  thicket 
of  short  pines,  a  mile  or  two  from  his  premises,  and  to 
persuade  his  foster-brother,  Thomas  A.  Jones,  to  take 

*Poore,  I,  255;  Lloyd's  testimony  on  C.  T.,  Poore,  I,  130. 


CAPTURE  AND  DEATH  OF  BOOTH    77 

measures  to  transport  them  across  the  river  and  to 
care  for  them  in  the  meantime.  Here  they  languished 
for  six  long  days  and  five  longer  nights,  a  prey  to 
undefined  fears  and  unspeakable  misery;  Booth  lying 
on  the  ground,  his  illset  limb  irritated  to  the  verge  of 
mortification  by  his  long  ride;  Herold  loitering  about 
with  his  carbine,  on  watch  for  the  possible  approach 
of  the  hunters,  hearing  in  the  distance  the  occasional 
tramp  of  cavalry,  and  driven  at  length  to  shoot  the 
two  horses  that  had  carried  them  so  far  lest  the 
neighing  of  the  animals  betray  their  whereabouts. 
Jones  belonged  to  a  well-known  type  of  Southern  man- 
hood: cool,  reticent,  absolutely  fearless,  ready  to  lay 
down  his  life  for  a  cause  once  he  had  espoused  it; 
incapable  of  entertaining  the  thought  of  deserting  any 
enterprise  he  had  undertaken,  no  matter  how  perilous 
or  even  hopeless  it  might  become.  He  watched  over 
the  fugitives  while  he  scanned  the  river  for  a  propi- 
tious moment  for  them  to  cross;  a  slave  who  had 
spurned  the  boon  of  freedom,  to  tread  in  the  footsteps 
of  his  master,  carrying  their  food  and  holding  in  readi- 
ness for  their  use  the  boat  which  he  fished  in  by  day 
and  hid  on  shore  at  night.  Jones,  who  had  been  the 
chief  agent  on  the  Maryland  side  of  the  underground 
mail  between  Eichmond  and  points  north,  kept  Booth 
supplied  with  the  current  newspapers,  the  reading  of 
which  must  have  superadded  mental,  to  his  physical, 
angniish.*  To  give  vent  to  his  feelings  as  well  as  to 
wile  away  the  heavy-laden  hours,  he  scribbled  with  a 
pencil  on  the  blank  leaves  of  his  pocket  diary  of  the 

*  See  account  by  George  Alfred  Townsend  in  Century  for  April,  1884. 


78  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

last  year  an  appeal  to  posterity:  an  appeal  which 
might  never  have  reached  its  destination  had  not  the 
sedulous  concealment  of  the  book  on  the  Conspiracy 
Trial  and  its  mutilated  state  when  unearthed,  led  to 
its  production  on  the  impeachment  proceeding  against 
President  Johnson.     The  first  entry  begins : 

"April  13,  14,  Friday,  the  Ides.  Until  to-day  nothing  was 
ever  thought  of  sacrificing  to  our  country's  wrongs";  (obvi- 
ously, these  words  could  not  have  been  written  before  the 
writer  had  caught  sight  of  the  newspapers,  which  he  had  no 
opportunity  to  do  until  he  reached  his  present  asylum).  He 
goes  on:  **For  six  months  we  had  worked  to  capture.  .  .  . 
I  struck  boldly,  and  not  as  the  papers  say.  I  walked  with 
a  firm  step  through  a  thousand  of  his  friends;  was  stopped, 
but  pushed  on.  A  colonel  was  at  his  side.  I  shouted  sic 
semper,  before  I  fired.  ...  I  can  never  repent  it  though  we 
hated  to  kill.  .  ,  .  This  night  (before  the  deed)  I  wrote  a  long 
article  and  left  it  for  one  of  the  editors  of  the  National 
Intelligencer,  in  which  I  fully  set  forth  our  reasons  for  our 
proceedings.  He  or  the  govnt— "  (Here,  apparently,  the 
writing  was  laid  aside  to  make  an  attempt  to  cross,  as  he 
resumes)  :  "Friday  21.  After  being  hunted  like  a  dog 
through  swamps,  woods  and  last  night  chased  by  gunboats 
till  I  was  forced  to  return  wet,  cold  and  starving,  with  every 
man's  hand  against  me,  I  am  here  in  despair.  And  why? 
For  doing  what  Brutus  was  honored  for— what  made  Tell  a 
hero.  .  .  .  The  little,  the  very  little  I  left  behind  me  to  clear 
my  name,  the  Govnt.  will  not  allow  to  be  printed.  So  ends 
all.  ...  I  have  only  heard  of  what  has  been  done  (except 
what  I  did  myself)  and  it  fills  me  with  horror.  .  .  .  To-night 
I  will  once  more  try  the  river  with  the  intent  to  cross.  I  have 
a  greater  desire  and  almost  a  mind  to  return  to  Washington 


CAPTURE  AND  DEATH  OF  BOOTH    79 

and  clear  my  name  which  I  feel  I  can  do.  .  .  .  To-night  I 
try  to  escape  these  bloodhounds  once  more.  ...  I  have  too 
great  a  soul  to  die  like  a  criminal.  ...  I  do  not  wish  to  shed 
a  drop  of  blood,  but  'I  must  fight  the  course.'  'Tis  all  that's 
left  me."* 

In  the  dusk  of  this  same  evening,  with  two  seven- 
shooting  revolvers  and  his  blood-stained  knife  in  his 
belt,  Ms  field-glass  slung  over  his  shoulder,  still  cling- 
ing to  his  crutch,  resolved  to  die  before  being  taken 
alive — he  is  lifted  on  a  horse  and,  with  Herold  carry- 
ing the  carbine  and  Jones  leading  the  way,  is  guided 
through  the  dense  undergrowth  and  down  a  steep 
ravine  to  the  water's  edge,  placed  in  the  stern  of  the 
boat  brought  from  its  hiding  place  by  the  faithful 
negro,  and,  Herold  taking  the  oars,  launched  on  the 
surface  of  the  stream.  The  Potomac,  at  this  point 
three  or  four  miles  wide,  having  made  a  mighty  sweep 
to  the  east  and  then  to  the  south,  the  exhausted  men, 
after  rowing  all  night,  find  themselves  ten  miles  up 
the  river  and  still  near  the  Marj^land  side.  Forced  to 
lie  hid  in  the  swamps  of  the  Nanjamoy  Cove  during 
the  hours  of  daylight,  they  push  off  again  when  dark- 
ness comes,  descend  the  river,  passing  their  starting 
point  of  the  night  before,  and,  early  Sunday  morning, 
land  at  last  on  the  Virginia  shore  five  miles  below.  A 
lady  living  on  the  bank  furnished  them  with  means  of 
transportation  to  the  cabin  of  a  Mr.  Bryan,  where, 
after  stopping  during  a  portion  of  the  day,  they  were 
taken  by  him  to  the  country  residence  of  Dr.  Richard 

*  Cf.  version  in  Imp.  Inv.,  286,  with  one  in  S.  T.,  310.  Facsimile  of  close 
in  Century,  April,  1896.     See  testimony  of  Holt  on  Imp.  Inv.,  28,  285. 


80  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

Stewart,  some  eight  miles  inland,  reaching  there  at 
seven  o'clock  in  the  evening.  The  doctor,  having 
repeatedly  suffered  arrest  on  the  charge  of  aiding  the 
rebellion,  at  this  crisis  was  in  no  humor  to  risk  his 
neck  by  harboring  possible  assassins,  and  he  denied 
them  admittance,  though  he  provided  them  with  sup- 
per and  directed  them  to  a  hut  on  his  premises  occu- 
pied by  a  negro,  named  Lucas,  where  they  passed  the 
night.  From  this  squalid  lodging,  the  actor,  so  re- 
cently ''the  glass  of  fashion  and  the  mould  of  form," 
despatched  a  note  to  the  doctor  written  on  a  leaf  from 
the  diary,  the  tone  of  which  may  serve  to  show  that 
neither  crime,  nor  wounds,  nor  suffering,  nor  banish- 
ment, not  even  the  imminence  of  capture  and  a  felon's 
doom  could  quell  the  vainglorious  self-consciousness 
of  this  hero  of  the  boards : 

''Dear  Sir:  Forgive  me,  but  I  have  some  little  pride.  I 
hate  to  blame  you  for  your  want  of  hospitality;  you  know 
your  own  affairs.  I  was  sick  and  tired,  with  a  broken  leg, 
In  need  of  medical  advice.  I  would  not  have  turned  a  dog 
from  my  door  in  such  a  condition.  However,  you  were  kind 
enough  to  give  me  something  to  eat,  for  which  I  not  only  thank 
you,  but  on  account  of  the  reluctant  manner  in  which  it  was 
bestowed,  I  feel  bound  to  pay  for  it.  It  is  not  the  substance, 
but  the  manner  in  which  kindness  is  extended,  that  makes 
one  happy  in  the  acceptance  thereof.  The  sauce  in  raeat  is 
ceremony;  meeting  were  bare  without  it.  Be  kind  enough 
to  accept  the  enclosed  two  dollars  and  a  half  (though  hard  to 
spare )  for  what  we  have  received. 
April  24,  1865.  ^^^^  respectfully, 

To  Dr.  Stewart  Stranger. 

*  See  Note  IV  to  this  chapter  in  Appendix;  Imp.  Inv.,  677;  S.  T.,  402. 


CAPTURE  AND  DEATH  OF  BOOTH    81 

The  next  morning  (Monday  the  24th)  Lncas  drove 
his  unwelcome  guests  the  twelve  miles  to  Port  Conway, 
arriving  there  about  half-past  nine  o'clock,  where  they 
tried  to  engage  a  fisherman  who  lived  close  by  the 
river  (Rollins  by  name)*  to  take  them  across  to  Port 
Royal  on  the  opposite  side;  but,  before  he  got  ready 
to  do  so,  three  Confederate  cavalrymen  coming  home 
from  the  war — Jett,  Ruggles  and  Bainbridge — hailed 
the  ferry,  and,  after  a  parley  with  them.  Booth  and 
Herold  were  poled  across  by  the  negro  ferryman  in 
company  with  the  officers — Booth  astride  one  of  their 
horses.  Three  miles  farther  on,  Booth  was  left,  under 
the  guise  of  a  wounded  Confederate  by  the  name  of 
Bovd,  at  the  residence  of  Richard  H.  Garrett,  and 
Herold  went  on  with  the  soldiers  to  Bowling  Green, 
thirteen  miles  distant.  The  next  day  (Tuesday) 
Herold  came  back  in  company  with  Ruggles  and  Bain- 
bridge as  far  as  Garrett's,  where  he  joined  his  leader; 
the  two  officers  riding  on  toward  Port  Royal  until 
hearing  that  the  place  was  alive  with  Union  soldiers 
searching  for  the  assassins,  they  hid  themselves  in  the 
woods.  That  afternoon  a  troop  of  cavalry  passing 
along  the  road  so  frightened  Garrett  that  he  urged  the 
instant  departure  of  his  questionable  guests,  who 
thereupon  sought  refuge  in  a  plantation  in  the  rear  of 
the  house,  but  after  nightfall  returned,  pleading  for 
shelter,  and  were  given  lodgings  in  a  tobacco  ware- 
house on  the  premises  by  one  of  Garrett's  sons,  who, 

*  Testimony   is   discrepant  as  to   the   role   of  Rollins   and   who    the 
ferryman  was.     The  clearest  witness  is  L.  B.  Baker  on  S.  T.,  317.     See 
Ruggles'  narrative  in  Century  for  January,  1890,  and  Oldroyd,  302. 
6 


82  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

apprehensive  tliey  miglit  make  off  with  his  father's 
horses,  locked  them  in  and  remained  on  the  watch  in 
a  corn-crib  near  by. 

We  now  return  to  Baker's  men,  who  struck  Port 
Conway  about  noon  the  day  after  their  quarry  crossed 
the  Rappahannock.  Rollins  recognized  the  photo- 
graphs of  Booth  and  Herold  shown  him  by  one  of  the 
detectives  as  those  of  the  two  men  who  had  tried  to 
hire  him  to  put  them  over  the  river  and  were  in  fact 
ferried  over  in  company  with  the  three  Confederates, 
one  of  whom  (Jett)  he  knew  as  a  visitor  at  Bowling 
Green.  He  was  immediately  impressed  into  the  serv- 
ice as  guide,  and  the  whole  party  of  nearly  thirty  men 
with  their  horses  were  hurried  aboard  the  scow,  nearly 
swamping  the  boat  in  their  passage.  On  they  sped 
for  Bowling  Green,  passing  the  Garrett  homestead  that 
stood  in  a  clump  of  trees  back  of  the  road,  where 
Booth  caught  a  glimpse  of  the  riders  as  he  lay  on  the 
lawn.  Jett  was  seized  in  his  bed  at  midnight,  forced 
at  the  point  of  a  pistol  to  disclose  the  whereabouts  of 
the  fugitives  he  had  aided  the  day  before  and  then  to 
guide  the  officers  to  the  spot.  Back  they  go,  reaching 
Garrett's  at  two  o'clock  Wednesday  morning.  Aroused 
from  slumber  by  the  inrush  of  mounted  men,  the  owner 
of  the  mansion  tremblingly  protested  that  the  two 
strangers  had  gone  to  the  woods ;  at  which  unwelcome 
tidings  the  leader  of  the  band  called  for  a  rope  to  hang 
the  old  man  on  one  of  his  own  trees.  To  save  his 
father,  the  son  came  forward  and  pointed  to  the  build- 
ing in  which  the  outlaws   lay  hidden;  and  with  an 


CAPTURE  AND  DEATH  OF  BOOTH    83 

exultant  shout  the  whole  force  surged  forward  and 
invested  the  last  refuge  of  their  priceless  prey.* 

The  warehouse  was  sixty  feet  square,  empty  save 
for  a  few  articles  of  household  furniture  and  some 
loose  straw  and  hay  in  one  corner ;  having  large  double 
doors  in  front  and  open  spaces  four  inches  wide  in  the 
boarding  on  the  sides,  to  air  the  tobacco  when  the 
structure  was  in  use.  All  was  dark  and  still  inside. 
Lieutenant  Baker  advanced  to  the  front  and,  taking 
the  key  from  young  Garrett,  unlocked  a  small  door  in 
one  of  the  large  doors,  opened  it,  and  pushed  the 
reluctant  boy  inside,  who  was  immediately  driven  back 
by  a  threat  to  take  his  life.  Thereupon,  raising  his 
voice.  Baker  spoke :  *  *  We  have  fifty  armed  men  around 
the  barn  and  unless  you  surrender  we  will  set  fire  to 
the  building."  Out  of  the  darkness  within  came  the 
response :  ''Captain,  give  a  lame  man  a  chance.  Draw 
up  your  men  before  the  door  and  I'll  come  out  and 
fight  the  whole  command."  This  foolhardy  challenge 
being  put  aside  with  the  remark  that  they  "came  not 
to  fight  him,  but  to  take  him  prisoner,"  the  voice  was 
heard  again:  ''Well,  my  brave  boys,  you  can  x^repare 
a  stretcher  for  me. ' '  In  the  meantime,  the  cavalrvmen 
had  dismounted  and,  two  by  two,  led  the  horses  out 
of  range  of  the  threatened  fire;  but,  exhausted  as  the 
men  were  from  having  been  in  the  saddle  without  sleep 
or  rest  since  Monday  night,  instead  of  taking  their 
stand  to  guard  the  rear  and  sides  of  the  building,  they 
dropped  down  promiscuously  under  the  trees;  and  it 
was  with  the  utmost  difficulty  that  Conger  could  pre- 

*  Garrett's  testimony,  S.  T.,  302. 


84  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

vail  upon  as  few  as  six  of  their  number  to  sit  upon 
rails  placed  not  less  than  thirty  feet  from  the  ware- 
house. While  this  movement  was  being  executed  the 
strain  had  become  too  much  for  Herold,  and,  after  a 
parley  over  the  surrender  of  liis  arms  which  Booth 
claimed  as  his  own,  he  was  pulled  out  emptyhanded 
by  the  wrists  and  passed  over  to  Doherty,  who  tied 
him  to  a  tree.  Conger,  then,  leaving  positive  orders 
that  not  a  soldier  should  come  nearer  than  the  pre- 
scribed distance,  and  under  no  circumstances  to  fire  a 
shot,  started  from  the  front  around  to  the  right  to  the 
corner  in  the  rear,  and,  inserting  a  lighted  wisp  of 
straw,  set  fire  to  the  stubble  on  the  floor.  As  the 
flames  lit  up  the  lofty  interior,  Baker  caught  sight  of 
the  trapped  tragedian  as  he  was  about  to  make  his 
final  exit.  Just  risen  from  his  bed  of  straw,  with  a 
crutch  under  his  left  arm  and  the  carbine  in  his  right 
hand,  Booth  was  in  the  act  of  starting  towards  the 
fire,  peering  through  the  interspaces  to  catch  sight  of 
the  invisible  foe.  He  caught  up  an  old  table  as  if  to 
throw  it  on  the  blaze  but  dropped  it  and,  looking  up, 
saw  the  flames  mounting  to  the  roof.  * '  Then  he  seemed 
to  give  it  up";  and  his  countenance  fell.  Dropping 
his  crutch  and  passing  the  carbine  to  his  left  hand,  he 
drew  his  revolver  and,  "with  a  kind  of  limping,  halting- 
jump, "  advanced  within  twelve  feet  of  the  door  where 
Baker,  unseen  by  him,  was  awaiting  his  approach; 
and,  there,  stood  for  one  brief  moment — encompassed 
by  armed  men,  to  every  one  of  whom,  in  the  light  of 
the  fire,  he  was  an  easy  mark — weighing  the  supreme 
alternative  before  him;   should  he  "live  to   be  the 


CAPTUEE  AND  DEATH  OF  BOOTH    85 

show  and  gaze  of  the  time,"  *'be  baited  with-  the 
rabble's  curse,"  or  should  he  die  by  his  own  hand? 

A  pistol  shot  breaks  upon  the  smoky  air.  The  actor 
with  an  upward  spring  falls  on  his  back.  Baker  is 
upon  him  in  an  instant,  twisting  out  of  his  clenched 
hand  the  revolver;  the  carbine  having  fallen  between 
his  legs.  Garrett  is  the  next  man  to  enter,  calling  for 
help  to  put  out  the  fire.  Conger  rushing  in  exclaims: 
*'He  shot  himself."  Baker  answers:  *'He  did  not. 
You  shot  him."  Conger  rejoins:  ^'I  did  not";  and, 
pointing  to  the  wound  in  the  right  side  of  the  neck 
whence  the  blood  was  oozing,  reiterates:  ''Yes,  sir;  he 
shot  himself."  Baker  persists,  saying  *'He  did  not. 
I  saw  him  the  whole  time,  and  the  man  who  shot  him 
goes  back  to  Washington  under  arrest." 

Doherty,  having  disposed  of  Herold,  here  comes  in, 
takes  possession  of  the  carbine  and  the  weapons  in 
Booth's  belt;  and  the  apparently  inanimate  body  is 
dragged  out  of  reach  of  the  flames  and  laid  under  a 
tree.  Signs  of  life  reappear,  the  parched  lips  mur- 
muring: "Tell,  mother — tell  mother — I  die  for  my 
country."  The  captive  is  carried  to  the  porch  of  the 
house  and  a  physician  is  sent  for  to  Port  Eoyal.  On 
his  arrival,  discovering  that  the  ball  had  passed 
through  the  neck-bone  ''perforating  both  sides  of  the 
collar,"  he  gives  his  opinion  that  the  patient  cannot 
live  more  than  an  hour.  Thereupon,  Conger,  in  haste 
to  be  off  with  the  momentous  tidings,  and  his  col- 
league, each  kneeling  on  one  side  of  the  still  breathing 
man,  rifle  his  pockets  and  his  person,  Booth  mumbling 
once  and  again,  "Kill  me!  Kill  me!"  until  he  relapses 


86  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

into  unconsciousness  which  at  about  seven  o'clock 
deepens  into  death.  The  breath  was  hardly  out  of  the 
bod}^  before  Conger,  with  the  articles  taken  from  it 
tied  up  in  a  handkerchief,  is  in  the  saddle  bound  for 
Belle  Plain;  and,  catching  the  regular  steamer  there 
for  Washington,  reached  the  headquarters  of  his  chief 
at  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon.  Thence  the  two 
officers  hurried  to  the  War  Department  and,  Stanton 
having  gone  home,  to  his  residence,  and  there  an- 
nounced the  capture  and  death  of  the  assassin.  The 
handkerchief  was  opened,  the  articles  examined,  and 
Stanton,  retaining  the  diary,  confided  the  rest  to 
General  Baker.  That  redoubtable  officer  was  further 
marked  out  by  the  head  of  the  War  Office  as  entitled 
to  the  credit  of  the  glorious  success,  by  being  ordered 
to  board  the  monitor  Moyitauk,  sail  down  the  river  to 
meet  the  steamboat  coming  up  with  the  captives — the 
living  and  the  dead — and  have  them  transferred  to  the 
vessel  of  which  he  was  in  charge. 

As  soon  as  Booth  was  dead,  his  body  was  sewn  up 
in  an  army  blanket  and,  with  the  weapons  on  his  per- 
son when  he  fell,  put  into  an  old  market  wagon  driven 
by  a  negro  and  started  for  Belle  Plain;  the  cavalry 
escorting  and  Herold  following  on  foot  until  he  could 
walk  no  longer,  when  he  was  tied  on  a  horse.  At  six 
in  the  evening  the  cavalcade  reembarked  on  the  Ide, 
met  the  monitor  halfway  to  the  capital,  followed  in  its 
wake  until  they  reached  the  Navj'^  Yard,  where,  on 
Thursday  morning,  at  two  o'clock  (the  27th),  the 
transfer  was  made,  the  corpse  being  laid  on  the  deck 
and  Herold  joining  the  double-ironed  and  canvass- 


CAPTURE  AND  DEATH  OF  BOOTH    87 

bagged  prisoners  in  the  hold.  Later  in  the  day  a  post- 
mortem examination  was  made  for  the  purpose  of 
identifying  the  body  as  Booth's  beyond  question;  and 
the  surgeon-general  removed  the  perforated  section  of 
the  vertebrae  for  preservation  as  a  national  momento. 
In  the  dead  hours  of  the  night,  under  the  superintend- 
ence of  the  chief  of  the  detective  force,  the  remains 
were  lowered  into  a  boat,  rowed  over  to  the  arsenal 
grounds,  placed  in  a  gun  box  and  buried  beneath  the 
pavement  of  a  large  cell  on  the  ground  floor  of  the  Old 
Penitentiary,  the  iron  gate  locked  and  the  key  de- 
livered to  Stanton.  No  effort  was  spared  to  conceal 
the  time,  place  and  circumstances  of  the  burial.  False 
stories  were  set  afloat  more  effectually  to  further  this 
purpose.  From  earth,  air,  river  or  ocean,  no  relic 
should  be  filched  to  be  made  the  subject  of  rebel 
glorification. 

Who  fired  the  shot  that  baulked  the  complete  ven- 
geance of  an  outraged  people?  This  question,  to  set- 
tle which  beyond  controversy  the  authorities  were  in 
possession  of  evidence  abundant  and  conclusive,  they 
preferred  to  let  rest  upon  testimony  inconclusive,  im- 
peachable and  contradictory. 

Booth  was  carried  out  of  the  burning  warehouse  and 
laid  upon  the  porch  of  the  Garrett  homestead  between 
three  and  four  o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  during  the 
interval  that  elapsed  before  the  arrival  of  a  physician, 
Conger  went  in  search  of  the  soldier  who,  his  colleague 
insisted,  in  direct  defiance  of  his  orders,  anticipated 
the  suicide  of  the  fugitive  at  the  moment  his  capture 


88  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

was  certain.  He  found  the  offender  in  the  person  of 
Boston  Corbett,  the  first  sergeant  of  the  company  from 
which  the  detachment  of  cavalry  was  drawn, — a  strict 
disciplinarian,  "with  an  odd  expression  of  counte- 
nance," a  gloomy  disposition,  eccentric  habits,  an 
extravagant  estimate  of  his  own  importance,  and,  in 
any  cause  he  espoused,  earnest  to  the  point  of  fanati- 
cism. When  called  to  account  for  shooting  without 
orders,  he  drew  himself  up,  saluted  and  said:  "Col- 
onel, Providence  directed  me" — a  line  of  defence  that 
"rather  non-plussed  the  colonel,"  who  decided  "to  let 
Providence  and  the  Secretary  of  War  take  care  of 
him."  When  arraigned  by  Doherty,  his  immediate 
superior  (if  that  officer  is  to  be  believed),  he  invoked 
no  supernatural  authority,  but  pleaded  that  seeing 
Booth  holding  his  carbine  as  if  about  to  shoot,  he  fired 
to  disable  him  in  the  arm,  but  the  bullet  miscarried 
and  struck  a  spot  corresponding  to  the  one  where  the 
assassin's  entered  the  head  of  Lincoln; — another 
providential  interposition,  as  the  lieutenant  appears  to 
have  considered — this  time,  however,  not  inspiring  the 
shooter  but  guiding  the  ball.  Corbett 's  story,  highly 
improbable  because  of  the  relative  position  of  the 
parties,  and  uncorroborated  by  the  testimony  of  a 
single  witness  out  of  the  twenty-four  comrades  pre- 
sumably on  the  watch,  seems  to  have  been  accepted 
without  question.  The  only  alternative  solution  was 
suicide — a  mode  of  death  regarded  by  captors,  authori- 
ties and  the  people  at  large  as  too  heroic  for  such  a 
monster  in  crime.  The  offending  sergeant  did  not  go 
back  to  Washington  under  arrest.    So  far  from  re- 


CAPTURE  AND  DEATH  OF  BOOTH    89 

penting  of  his  insubordination,  he  gloried  in  his  deed. 
He  was  used  by  the  government  as  a  witness  before 
the  Military  Commission,  where,  only  twenty  days 
after  his  boasted  exploit,  he  testified  that  "from  his 
desperate  replies"  he  knew  the  "man  would  not  be 
taken  alive."  "My  impression  was  it  was  time  the 
man  was  shot,  and  I  took  steady  aim  on  my  arm  and 
shot  him  through  a  large  crack  in  the  barn."  Be- 
cause, as  he  further  said,  improper  motives  had  been 
imputed  to  him  for  his  act,  he  embraced  the  opportu- 
nity to  set  himself  right.  "I  twice  offered  to  my  com- 
manding officer,  Lieutenant  Doherty.  and  once  to 
Mr.  Conger  to  go  in  the  barn  and  take  the  man;  .  .  . 
that  it  was  less  dangerous  to  go  in  and  fight  him  than 
to  stand  before  a  crack  exposed  to  his  fire ;  .  .  .  but  I 
was  not  sent  in."  (An  incident  of  which  we  hear 
nothing  from  the  testimony  of  the  three  officers  them- 
selves.) "It  was  not  through  fear  at  all  that  I  shot 
him.  ...  I  thought  he  would  do  harm  to  our  men  in 
trying  to  fight  his  way  out  through  that  door  if  I  did 
not."  Unrebuked,  he  left  the  stand  to  start  on  a 
triumphant  tour  over  the  Xorth,  everywhere  welcomed 
as  an  avenger  of  blood.  He  received  his  proportionate 
share  of  the  reward  for  the  capture,  notwithstanding 
(if  his  story  is  to  be  believed)  it  was  his  own  wanton 
act  that  saved  the  captive  from  paying  the  penalty  of 
his  crime.  For  him,  the  Secretary  of  War  smoothed 
his  terrifying  front.  Providence,  the  other  authority 
to  whom  his  commanding  officer  consigned  him,  was 
not  so  favorable.  In  after  years,  having  been  ap- 
pointed doorkeeper  of  the  Kansas  House  of  Repre- 


90  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

sentatives,  he  tried  bis  skill  with  the  pistol  in  an  effort 
to  exterminate  the  entire  membership  of  that  body 
and,  in  consequence,  landed  in  a  lunatic  asylum. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  government  made  no  effort 
to  countervail  the  presumption  of  suicide  raised  by 
certain  incidents  of  the  capture.  Lieutenant  Baker, 
the  first  to  reach  the  fallen  man,  twisted  out  of  his 
right  hand  a  tightly  clenched  revolver,  a  seven-shooter, 
and  must  have  noticed  whether  it  had  just  been 
fired  or  not.  He  was  not  asked  the  question,  and  was 
not  even  sworn  before  the  Military  Commission. 
Colonel  Conger  supposed  Booth  had  shot  himself  and 
with  that  impression  examined  the  wound  as  soon  as 
he  entered  the  warehouse;  and  he  testified:  *'He  had 
the  appearance  of  a  man  who  had  put  a  pistol  to  his 
head  and  shot  himself — shooting  a  little  too  low." 
The  autopsy  should  have  disclosed  the  calibre  of  the 
pistol  and  the  size  of  the  ball  with  which  the  wound 
was  inflicted ;  the  War  Department  having  possession 
of  Booth's  weapons  might  easily  have  shown  whether 
or  not  one  chamber  of  the  revolver  was  empty,  as  it 
was  asserted  at  the  time  it  was.  But  the  autopsy,  so 
far  as  the  evidence  discloses,  amounted  to  but  an 
identification  of  the  corpse;  and  it  does  not  appear 
that  the  pistol,  with  which  the  assassin  might  have 
carried  out  his  resolve  never  to  be  taken  alive,  was 
ever  examined, 

Wlien  Robespierre  was  captured — ^'a  pistol  clenched 
convulsively  in  his  hand" — a  3^oung  gendarme  named 
Meda  claimed  the  honor  of  having  fired  the  shot  that 
shattered  the  under  jaw  of  the  hated  triumvir.    On 


CAPTURE  AND  DEATH  OF  BOOTH    91 

this  claim,  Carlyle  remarks:  "Meda  got  promoted  for 
his  services  of  this  night  and  died  General  and  Baron. 
Few  credited  Meda  in  what  was  otherwise  incredible." 
Mr.  John  Morley  declares:  "Wliether  Robespierre  was 
shot  by  an  officer  of  the  Conventional  force  or  at- 
tempted to  blow  out  his  brains  we  shall  never  know." 
The  two  cases  furnish  a  striking  parallel.  The 
immense  weight  of  odium  under  which  the  captive  was 
laboring;  the  beckoning  opportunity  to  pose  as  the 
instrument  of  a  nation's  justice;  the  indications  and 
the  likelihood  that  the  wound  was  self-inflicted;  the 
popular  revulsion  from  any  such  hypothesis  and  the 
consequent  eagerness  to  welcome  a  candidate  for 
the  glory  of  the  deed — features  unique  in  their  concat- 
enation— all  these  were  common  to  both.  In  the  case 
of  Robespierre,  however,  there  was  some  semblance 
of  investigation;  in  the  case  of  Booth,  there  was  none.* 

*  See  Note  V  to  this  chapter  in  Appendix,  where  the  authorities  on 
which  the  foregoing  narrative  is  founded  are  given. 


CHAPTER    IV 

The  Conspiracy  Teial 

In  the  very  focus  of  the  hurlyburly  of  pursuit  occa- 
sioned by  the  disappearance  of  the  assassin,  that 
branch  of  the  War  Department  yclept  the  Bureau  of 
Military  Justice,  presided  over  by  Joseph  Holt,  the 
judge  advocate  general  of  the  army,  was  steadily  at 
work  gathering  in  and  manipulating  witnesses  and 
accumulating  testimony  in  support  of  the  hypothesis 
fixed  upon  to  govern  the  prosecution.  That  the  calam- 
ity stunning  the  nation  in  the  hour  of  victory  was  the 
work  of  a  half-crazed  actor  and  his  madder  tool,  seiz- 
ing favorable  opportunity  to  murder  the  President  in 
the  theatre  and  the  Secretary  of  State  in  his  bed,  was 
a  solution  altogether  too  commonplace  to  find  harbor 
in  the  overheated  imaginations  of  the  managers  of  that 
institution.  So  stupendous  a  crime  must  have  had  its 
origin  in  the  rebellion — in  itself  a  gigantic  assassina- 
tion; must  have  been  the  outcome  of  months  if  not 
years  of  preparation,  numbering  adherents  high  and 
low  in  every  part  of  the  continent  from  Montreal  in 
the  north  to  Richmond  in  the  south.  On  the  morning 
of  Lincoln's  death,  Stanton  advised  the  American 
minister  at  London:  "The  murderer  of  the  President 
has  been  discovered  and  evidence  obtained  that  these 
horrible  crimes  were  committed  in  execution  of  a  con- 
spiracy deliberately  planned  and  set  on  foot  by  rebels 

(92) 


THE    CONSPIEACY    TRIAL  93 

under  the  pretense  of  avenging  the  South  and  aiding 
the  rebel  cause."  The  theory  of  the  prosecution  was 
set  forth  by  its  special  counsel:  '* Because  Abraham 
Lincoln  had  been  clear  in  his  office,  ...  he  must  be 
murdered;  because  Mr.  Seward  .  .  .  had  thwarted 
the  purpose  of  treason  to  plunge  his  country  in  a  war 
with  England,  he  must  be  murdered;  because  .  .  .  An- 
drew Johnson  would  succeed  to  the  Presidency  .  .  . 
he  must  be  murdered ;  because  the  Secretary  of  War 
had  taken  care  that  the  republic  should  live  and  not 
die,  he  must  be  murdered."  Already  convinced  that 
Jefferson  Davis  and  his  agents  were  guilty  of  such 
atrocities  as  starving  Union  prisoners,  smuggling 
clothing  infected  with  yellow  fever  and  smallpox  into 
Union  cities,  planning  to  dump  strychnine  and  prussic 
acid  into  the  New  York  reservoir  and  actually  attempt- 
ing to  set  the  city  on  fire,  Stanton  and  Holt  had  no 
reason  to  presume  that  such  case-hardened  traitors 
would  shrink  from  plunging  into  assassination  by  the 
wholesale ;  and  their  minds,  in  consequence,  were  in  a 
condition  to  receive  with  facile  credulity  and  lucrative 
welcome  every  scrap  of  testimony  looking  in  that 
direction  which  the  expert  purveyors  of  such  wares 
offered  for  sale  in  open  market.  The  chief  of  these 
was  Sanford  Conover,  who  had  already  served  as  a 
spy  on  the  Confederate  agents  in  Canada,  passing 
among  them  as  a  congenial  spirit  imder  the  name  of 
James  Watson  Wallace.  Of  this  accomplished  per- 
jurer, it  suffices  for  the  present  to  say  that,  in  his  long 
career  of  iniquity  before  he  finally  came  to  grief,  he 
never  failed  to  bring  back  to  the  tribunal,  blind  enough 


94  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

or  reckless  enough  to  accept  his  service,  precisely  the 
kind  and  quantity  of  testimony  he  was  sent  to  get, 
even  if  he  had  to  back  it  by  his  own  overtasked  oath. 
What  started  the  flight  of  such  unclean  birds  for  the 
harvest  fields  of  the  British  province,  however,  was 
not  altogether  the  figment  of  a  fevered  imagination. 
The  evidence  of  ''a  conspiracy  deliberately  planned 
and  set  on  foot  by  the  rebels,"  which  the  Secretary  of 
War  informed  the  court  of  St.  James's  had  been  ob- 
tained as  early  as  the  morning  after  the  assassination, 
could  have  consisted  alone  in  the  letter  signed  "Sam," 
found  in  Booth's  trunk,  which  proved  the  pendency 
for  an  indefinite  period  prior  to  its  date  in  March  of 
a  conspiracy  with  which  the  authorities  at  Richmond 
might  have  had  something  to  do.  This  something,  it 
is  true,  was  little  but,  in  this  time  of  stress,  enough. 
Here  was  a  conspiracy  of  dimensions  suited  to  the 
catastrophe ;  and  it  mattered  little  that  the  conspiracy, 
as  it  developed,  appeared  to  be  a  conspiracy  not  to 
assassinate  but  to  capture  the  President,  the  failure  of 
which,  besides,  antedated  the  collapse  of  the  rebellion 
— a  result  which  was  the  direct  antecedent  of  the 
assassination.  The  prosecuting  authorities  were  in 
no  humor  for  nice  distinctions  and  they  seized  upon 
the  position  as  invulnerable  that  a  plot  to  capture  was 
equivalent  to  a  plot  to  kill,  participation  in  the  one 
being  proof  of  participation  in  the  other.  Macaulay, 
speaking  of  the  incipient  plans  for  revolt  against 
Charles  IT  in  the  last  years  of  the  reign  of  that 
monarch,  remarks :  *  *  There  were  two  plots,  one  within 
the  other.     The  object  of  the  great  Whig  plot  was  to 


THE    CONSPIRACY   TRIAL  95 

raise  the  nation  in  arms  against  the  government.  .  The 
lesser  plot,  commonly  called  the  Rye  House  plot,  in 
which  only  a  few  desperate  men  were  concerned,  had 
for  its  object  the  murder  of  the  King  and  the  heir 
presumptive.  .  .  .  That  only  a  small  minority  had 
admitted  in  their  minds  the  thought  of  assassination 
is  fully  established;  but  as  the  two  conspiracies  ran 
into  each  other,  it  was  not  difficult  for  the  government 
to  confound  them  together."  And  John  Richard 
Green,  treating  of  the  same  incident,  concludes:  ''Both 
projects  were  betrayed,  and  though  they  were  wholly 
distinct  from  one  another,  the  cruel  ingenuity  of  the 
crown  law^^ers  blended  them  into  one."* 

In  the  present  instance  there  was  an  additional 
incentive  to  the  exercise  of  the  same  "cruel  ingenuity" 
on  the  part  of  the  prosecution.  Death  had  snatched 
the  arch-assassin  from  their  grasp;  Payne,  Atzerodt 
and  Herold  they  might  have  Inmg  "in  a  corner,"  with 
none  to  call  in  question  the  validity  or  justice  of  the 
process.  But  an  expiation  so  unspectacular  would 
have  been  but  a  sorry  afterpiece  to  a  world-historic 
tragedy.  To  fill  the  measure  of  the  people's  ven- 
geance, they  must  bring  within  the  sweep  of  the  sword 
of  the  republic  every  participant,  high  or  low,  far  or 
near,  active  or  passive,  from  the  fugitive  president  of 
the  moribund  Confederacy,  his  cabinet  ministers  and 
his  agents  in  Canada,  down  to  the  lackey  who  swept  out 
the  building  within  whose  guilty  walls  the  tragedy  was 
enacted.  "The  agreement  and  combination,"  so  the 
special  judge  advocate  insisted,  "was  not  to  kidnap" 

*Macaulay's  Hist.,  Vol.  I,  Chap.  II,  208-9.     Green's,  III,  451. 


96  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

— a  conspiracy,  by  its  very  name,  restricted  to  a  single 
victim — '*bnt  to  kill  and  murder  Abraham  Lincoln, 
William  H.  Seward,  Andrew  Johnson,  Ulysses  S. 
Grant,  Edwin  M.  Stanton  and  others  of  his  advisers"; 
— a  conspiracy  susceptible  of  enlargement  so  as  to 
embrace  the  entire  staff  of  the  executive.* 

This  obstinate  insistence  on  the  identity  of  the  two 
plots  was  exemplified  remarkably  in  the  treatment  of 
the  case  of  John  H.  Surratt.  That  this  young  man 
was  deeply  implicated  in  the  plot  to  capture,  the  evi- 
dence was  abundant ;  but  it  was  equally  so  that,  after 
the  failure  of  the  plot  and  the  departure  of  the  Presi- 
dent to  the  front,  he  left  AVashington  for  Richmond 
and  did  not  return  until  the  night  of  the  day  Richmond 
was  evacuated  and  then  only  to  pass  directly  through 
Washington  on  his  way  to  Montreal.  His  association 
with  Booth  since  the  beginning  of  the  year  appeared 
to  have  been  so  close  as  to  point  him  out  as  the 
assailant  of  Seward  and  to  cause  the  arrest  of  his 
mother  and  every  inmate  of  her  boarding  house.  Yet, 
at  the  same  time,  it  was  apparent  that  the  association 
came  to  an  end  with  his  departure  from  Washington, 
and  the  discovery  of  Payne  left  him  with  no  part  to 
play  on  the  fatal  night.  Nevertheless,  the  prosecution 
could  not  afford  to  lose  the  benefit  of  the  mass  of  proof 
that  clustered  around  the  house  in  H  Street.  The 
meetings  of  the  conspirators  there,  though  not  extend- 
ing into  the  month  of  April,  were  nevertheless  con- 
strued to  be  the  meetings  of  assassins,  and  the  pretence 

*  Bingham's  argument   in  Pitman,     See   Note  I  to  this  chapter   in 
Appendix. 


THE    CONSPIRACY    TRIAL  97 

of  a  plot  to  capture  should  not  avail  to  mitigate  their 
common  guilt. 

When,  therefore,  after  an  absence  O'f  twelve  days, 
the  posse  sent  to  Canada  in  pursuit  of  Surratt  returned 
with  the  tidings  that  the  culprit  had  left  Montreal  the 
day  before  the  assassination  to  come  back  the  Tuesday 
aftet,  the  fate   of   the   two   male   boarders   at   Mrs. 
Surratt 's — drafted  into  the  service  of  the  expedition — 
hung   trembling   in    the   balance.     Against   Holahan, 
however,  the  severest  scrutiny  failed  to  detect  a  single 
criminating   circumstance;   but,    on   the   other   hand, 
against  Wiechmann  they  cropped  out  on  every  side.    A 
clerk  in  the  War  Department,  he  was  the  roommate  of 
Booth's  chief  of  staff,  the  favorite  boarder  of  the  lady 
of    the    house,    and    hail-fellow-well-met    with    every 
visitor  of  her  son.     The  day  after  he  reached  Wash- 
ington from   Canada   he  was   summoned   to   appear 
before  the  War  Minister — then  in  the  mood  of  "the 
enraged  Northumberland."     The  details  of  the  inter- 
view must  be  left  to  the  imagination.    Doubtless,  but 
one  alternative  was  held  out  to  him — to  make  a  clean 
breast  of  it  or  join  his  former  companions  in  the  hold 
of  the  monitor.     A  stenographer  being  called  in,  his 
statement  was  taken  down  and  sworn  to.     As  he  had 
not  seen  his  chum  since  the  night  in  April  when  Surratt 
passed  through  Washington  on  his  way  to  Montreal, 
his  testimony  against  the  son  went  no  further  than  to 
connect  him  with  the  plot  to  capture,  on  which  point 
it  was  not  needed ;  but  he  was  able  to  furnish  two  items 
of  evidence  tending  to  implicate  the  mother  in  the 
assassination.    He  had  driven  his  landlady  twice  dur- 

7 


98  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

ing  the  fatal  week  to  her  old  place  in  the  country, — 
on  Tuesday  and  Friday,  on  the  later  date  carrying  a 
field-glass  which  Booth  left  that  afternoon  at  her 
house  for  the  purpose,  and  which  he  called  for  at  the 
tavern  in  his  flight.  At  the  close  of  the  examination, 
his  stern  inquisitor  said:  "Mr.  Wiechmann,  for  your 
safety  in  this  thing,  you  will  have  to  go  to  Carroll 
prison";  and  to  Carroll  prison  Mr.  Wiechmann  went, 
''laboring  under  a  great  deal  of  excitement  and  under 
a  great  deal  of  nervousness"  (as  he  himself  says  and 
we  may  well  believe) — there  to  be  warned  "by  an 
officer  of  the  government"  "that  unless  he  testified  to 
more  than  he  had  already  stated  they  would  hang  him, 
too."* 

The  right  arm  of  the  Bureau  in  its  work  of  prepara- 
tion was  La  Fayette  C.  Baker,  the  detective  who  had 
so  highly  distinguished  himself  in  planning  the  cap- 
ture of  Booth  and  whose  methods  are  thus  described 
by  a  writer  of  the  day :  ' '  He  made  himself  thoroughly 
conversant  with  the  associations  and  habits  of  the 
chief  actor's  acquaintances  in  Washington,  Baltimore, 
Montreal  and  other  cities.  Some  were  promptly 
arrested;  a  careful  espionage  was  established  over 
others;  confidential  agents  were  sent  far  and  wide, 
and  some  of  them  in  disgiiise ;  the  magnetic  telegraph 
and  the  photographic  camera  were  called  into  the 
service  for  the  transmission  of  intelligence  and  the 
multiplication  of  portraits  of  identification";  and 
(what  by  these  efforts  was  a  matter  of  course)  "it  was 
not  long  before  the  proofs  of  a  conspiracy  organized 

*  S.  T.,  446,  820,  836. 


THE    CONSPIRACY   TRIAL  99 

at  Richmond  and  perfected  in  Canada  were  over- 
whelming."* Baker  in  his  book  states  that  Stanton's 
despatch  to  the  Associated  Press  awarding  him  '*the 
honor  and  prestige  of  the  capture  induced  all  those 
previously  engaged  in  the  search  to  immediately  aban- 
don the  whole  case.  Evidence  to  convict  the  assassins 
had  yet  to  be  obtained.  On  my  bureau  devolved  the 
task  of  procuring,  compiling  and  arranging  the  testi- 
mony. I  subpoenaed  for  the  prosecution  and  defence 
more  than  two  hundred  witnesses."!  And  yet,  of  this 
Atlas  of  the  prosecution,  when,  but  little  more  than 
two  years  afterwards,  he  was  devoting  his  unrivaled 
powers  to  implicate  President  Johnson  in  the  assas- 
sination, a  minority  of  the  judiciary  committee  of  the 
House  of  Representatives  reported  as  follows:  ''Al- 
though examined  on  oath,  time  and  again,  and  on 
various  occasions,  it  is  doubtful  whether  he  has  in  any 
one  thing  told  the  truth  even  by  accident.  .  .  And 
we  are  glad  to  know  that  no  one  member  of  the  com- 
mittee deems  any  statement  made  by  him  as  worthy 
of  the  slightest  credit.  .  .  .  Clothed  with  power  by  a 
reckless  administration,  and  with  his  unprincipled 
tools  and  spies  permeating  the  land  everywhere,  with 
uncounted  thousands  of  the  people's  money  placed  in 
his  hands,  .  .  .  this  creature  not  only  had  power  to 
arrest  without  crime  or  writ,  and  imprison  without 
limit,  any  citizen  of  the  republic,  but  that  he  actually 
did  so  arrest  thousands  all  over  the  land."| 

*  Poore  's  Introduction. 

t  Hist,  of  Secret  Service,  563. 

t  Imp.  Inv.,  p.  Ill  of  Reports. 


100  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

Such  were  the  means  and  such  the  instruments 
employed  in  the  procurement  of  witnesses  to  establish 
the  charges  drawn  up  by  the  judge  advocate  general. 
It  remained  to  provide  a  tribunal  to  hear  and  deter- 
mine. That  the  accused  were  entitled — every  one  by 
himself — to  a  trial  by  jury  in  the  civil  courts  of  the 
District  was  a  proposition  inadmissible  by  the  authori- 
ties because  incompatible  with  their  entire  scheme  of 
procedure.  In  the  first  place,  the  whole  array  of  con- 
spirators must  be  arraigned  at  the  same  time ;  and,  in 
the  next,  the  disloyal  element  in  the  vicinage  must  be 
allowed  no  chance  to  put  in  jeopardy  the  anticipated 
verdict.  What  the  crisis  demanded  was  a  tribunal 
that  would  be  troubled  with  no  technicalities  of  con- 
stitutional law,  no  pedantic  adherence  to  the  rules  of 
evidence  or  by  that  obnoxious  creation  of  legal  meta- 
physics— a  reasonable  doubt;  in  short,  a  court,  the 
members  of  which  would  submit  without  demur  to  the 
guidance  of  the  prosecuting  officers.  Accordingly,  on 
the  first  day  of  May,  President  Johnson  ordered  the 
assistant  adjutant  general  to  detail  nine  officers  of  the 
army  to  serve  as  a  military  commission  to  try  all  per- 
sons implicated  in  the  murder  of  their  late  com- 
mander-in-chief and  '*in  a  conspiracy  to  assassinate 
other  officers  of  the  federal  government";  and,  the 
members  having  been  picked  out  by  the  Secretary  of 
War,  they  were  summoned  to  meet  at  Washington  on 
the  ensuing  Monday.  On  the  second,  the  President 
issued  a  proclamation,  which,  after  reciting  that  ''it 
appears  from  evidence  in  the  Bureau  of  Military  Jus- 
tice that  the  atrocious  murder  of  .  .  .  Abraham  Lin- 


THE    CONSPIRACY   TRIAL  101 

coin  and  the  attempted  assassination  of  William  H. 
Seward  .  .  .  were  incited,  concerted  and  procured  by 
and  between  Jefferson  Davis,  late  of  Richmond,  Vir- 
ginia, and  Jacob  Thompson,  Clement  C.  Clay,  Beverly 
Tucker,  George  N.  Sanders,  William  C.  Cleary  and 
other  rebels  and  traitors  against  the  government  of 
the  United  States,  harbored  in  Canada," — offered  the 
following  rewards:  "$100,000  for  the  arrest  of  Jef- 
ferson Davis,"  and  $25,000  for  the  arrest  of  every  one 
of  the  others  named,  except  Cleary,  "the  late  clerk  of 
Clement  C.  Clay,"  for  whose  arrest  $10,000  were 
offered;  and,  thus,  having  provided  the  requisite 
tribunal  and  the  proper  machinery  to  apprehend  the 
conspirators  still  at  large — from  the  number  of  persons 
undergoing  confinement,  those  whom  the  Bureau  had 
pitched  upon  to  be  put  upon  trial  were  segregated  in 
the  Old  Penitentiary,  under  the  ground  floor  of  which 
Booth  lay  buried.  A  room  on  the  top  floor  was  fitted 
up  to  do  duty  as  a  temple  of  justice;  for,  in  this 
instance,  instead  of  the  prisoners  being  taken  to  the 
court,  the  court  was  to  be  taken  to  the  prisoners. 

On  Wednesday,  the  tenth  day  of  May,  the  commis- 
sion, as  finally  constituted,  held  its  first  session.  As  it 
happened,  at  the  dawn  of  this  day  Jefferson  Davis  was 
captured;  and  Clay,  within  twenty-four  hours,  sur- 
rendered himself  to  the  authorities.  No  postpone- 
ment, however,  was  asked  for  to  allow  these  two 
notable  captives  to  be  added  to  the  group  of  con- 
spirators to  be  brought  to  the  bar;  on  the  contrary, 
hurried  off  to  the  casemates  of  Fort  Monroe  they  were 
tried  and  found  guilty  in  their  absence.    The  court 


102  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

room  was  but  a  larger  cell  in  the  penitentiary;  forty- 
five  feet  in  length  by  twenty  in  width,  its  ceiling  eleven 
feet  high  supported  by  wooden  pillars  standing  along 
the  middle  line  of  the  floor  and  its  four  windows  grated 
with  iron.  The  members  of  the  commission,  in  full  uni- 
form, were  ranged  about  a  table  near  the  eastern  end 
and  parallel  to  its  north  side — Major  General  Hunter 
(fresh  from  the  grave  of  his  beloved  friend  and  com- 
mander, whence  he  had  hurried  to  preside  over  the 
court)  sitting  at  the  head;  on  his  right.  Generals  Wal- 
lace and  Ekin  and  Colonel  Tomkins ;  on  his  left  Generals 
Kautz,  Foster,  Harris  and  Howe  and  Lieutenant-Col- 
onel Clendenin.  At  the  foot  of  this  table  was  another, 
at  which  sat  Joseph  Holt,  the  judge  advocate  general, 
John  A.  Bingham,  the  special  assistant  judge  advo- 
cate and  Henry  L.  Burnett,  the  judge  advocate  of  the 
Western  Department — these  three  being  not  only 
counsel  for  the  government  but,  under  the  rules  of 
war,  members  of  the  commission.  In  the  centre  was 
the  witness-stand  facing  the  judges  and  behind  it  were 
a  table  for  the  prisoners'  counsel  and  another  for  the 
official  reporters.  There  was  no  space  for  spectators, 
the  rule  being,  ''No  admittance  except  on  business.** 
Along  the  western  side  was  a  platform,  one  foot  in 
height  and  four  in  width,  having  a  railing  in  front  and 
divided  near  the  south  corner  by  a  door  opening  into 
the  corridor  leading  to  the  cells.  Under  the  command 
of  General  John  F.  Hartranft.  the  special  provost- 
marshal  of  the  commission,  were  a  brigade  of  volun- 
teers and  a  detachment  of  the  veteran  reserve  corps, 
detailed  to  stand  guard  outside  and  inside  the  prison, 


THE    CONSPIRACY   TRIAL  103 

protect  the  members  of  the  court,  prevent  the  escape 
of  the  prisoners  and  repel  any  hostile  attack. 

At  the  appointed  hour  the  door  in  the  western  wall 
was  thrown  open  and  a  woe-begone  procession  wound 
its  painful  way  into  the  court  room.  Arnold,  Mudd, 
Spangler,  O'Laughlin,  Atzerodt,  Payne,  Herold — each, 
attended  by  an  armed  soldier — enter  in  the  order 
named  and,  turning  to  their  left,  mount  and  march 
along  the  platform,  taking  their  seats  with  the  soldiers 
sandwiched  among  them.  On  their  wrists  were  heavy 
bracelets  of  iron  joined  by  a  bar  of  the  same  metal 
ten  inches  long  (except  Mudd,  whose  handcuffs  were 
joined  by  a  chain) ;  on  their  ankles,  shackles  joined  by 
chains  short  enough  to  hamper  their  walk.  Payne  and 
Atzerodt,  in  addition,  have  iron  balls  attached  to  their 
legs,  which  the  guards  carry  on  entering  or  leaving 
the  room;  the  canvass  bags  they  wear  in  the  cells  are 
removed,  but  this  is  the  sole  relief  allowed  during  the 
long  days  of  the  trial.  Last  of  all,  emerges  from  the 
darkness  of  the  corridor  Mary  E.  Surratt,  who,  turn- 
ing to  her  right,  has  the  cut-off  corner  of  the  platform 
to  herself.  The  brutality  of  loading  down  with  fetters 
the  seven  male  prisoners,  guarded  as  they  were,  while 
in  the  presence  of  their  judges,  passed  with  indiffer- 
ence if  not  with  positive  approval — so  cruel  was  the 
humor  of  the  time;  but  the  presence  of  a  helpless 
woman  in  that  iron-bound  row  before  a  court  com- 
posed of  nine  officers  of  the  army  with  swords  by  their 
sides,  sent  a  shock  through  the  civilized  world.  The 
newspapers  in  their  accounts  of  the  session  stated  that 
she,  too,  was  ironed — a  report  never  publicly  denied 


104  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

until  the  lapse  of  eight  years  had  generated  a  uni- 
versal horror  at  the  mere  possibility  of  the  outrage.* 

This  gruesome  ceremony  being  over,  the  Charge  and 
Specification  were  read  to  the  eight  defendants.  By 
the  Charge  they  were  jointly  and  severally  accused  of 
*' traitorously"  conspiring,  ''together  with  John  H. 
Surratt,  John  Wilkes  Booth,  Jefferson  Davis"  and  the 
Confederate  agents  named  in  the  proclamation  of  the 
second  instant  (to  whom  were  now  added  ''George 
Harper,  George  Young  and  others  unknown"),  "to 
kill  and  murder  the  late  President  and  Commander- 
in-Chief  of  the  Army  and  Navy,  the  Vice-President, 
the  Secretary  of  State  and  the  Lieutenant-General ; 
and  of  having,  in  furtherance  thereof,  "together  with 
John  Wilkes  Booth  and  John  H.  Surratt,"  murdered 
the  late  President,  assaulted  with  intent  to  kill  the 
Secretary  of  State  and  lain  in  wait  to  murder  the 
Vice  President  and  Lieutenant  General.  The  Specifi- 
<!ation,  as  its  title  imports,  was  designed  to  distinguish 
the  particular  parts  the  accused  respectively  had  taken 
in  the  execution  of  the  conspiracy — a  task  which  the 
pleader  had  but  little  difficulty  in  performing  in  the 
cases  of  Spangler,  Herold,  Payne,  Atzerodt  and 
O'Laughlin  who  were  in  evidence  on  the  night  of  the 
tragedy;  but,  in  the  cases  of  Arnold,  Mudd  and  Mrs. 
Surratt,  inasmuch  as  they  were  absent  from  the  scefne, 
he  was  compelled  to  employ  such  vague  and  general 
allegations  as  "harboring,  aiding  and  assisting"  the 
more  active  conspirators,  and  for  a  period  of  time 
*'from,  on  or  before  the  sixth  of  March  up  to  the 

*  Note  II  of  this  chapter  in  Appendix. 


THE    CONSPIRACY   TRIAL  105 

fifteenth  of  April"; — by  this  means,  moreover,  ren- 
dering evidence  of  complicity  in  the  plot  to  capture 
competent  on  the  question  of  complicity  in  the  assas- 
sination. After  the  prisoners  had  pleaded  not  guilty, 
the  commission  adopted  rules  of  procedure,  among 
other  matters  providing  that  the  sessions  should  be 
secret, — no  one  to  be  admitted  except  by  permit  of  the 
president  of  the  tribunal  except  the  attendants  and 
counsel,  and,  also,  that  only  such  portions  of  the  tes- 
timony as  the  judge  advocate  allowed  should  be  made 
public;  and  then  adjourned  to  enable  the  accused  to 
employ  counsel. 

On  Friday  the  testimony  began,  the  major  portion 
at  first  directed  to  proving  the  complicity  of  Jefferson 
Davis  and  his  agents  in  Canada — a  class  of  testimony 
submitted  every  now  and  then  during  the  trial  and 
withheld  from  the  public  until  the  trial  was  virtually 
concluded ;  given  by  spies  in  the  pay  of  the  Bureau  and 
having  but  the  remotest  bearing  on  the  guilt  or  inno- 
cence of  the  several  prisoners  at  the  bar ;  the  witnesses 
being  allowed  to  tell  their  stories  in  their  own  way 
without  objection  and  without  cross-examination.  On 
Saturday  occurred  an  incident  which  cast  a  flood  of 
light  on  the  judicial  temper  of  certain  members  of  the 
commission.  Among  the  counsel  for  the  prisoners  was 
Thomas  Ewing,  Jr.,  an  officer  of  equal  rank  in  the 
army  with  members  of  the  court,  enjoying  an  estab- 
lished reputation  for  gallantry  and  skill  in  the  war, 
and  a  brother-in-law  of  General  Sherman.  His  ap- 
pearance on  behalf  of  Spangler  and  Doctor  Mudd, 
however   much   it   may   have   surprised   his   fellow- 


106  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

soldiers  on  the  bench,  could  not  be  made  the  sub- 
ject of  public  animadversion;  but  when  Reverdy 
Johnson  took  his  seat  among  the  counsel  of  Mrs. 
Surratt,  it  was  considered  high  time  to  assert  the 
sensitive  loyalty  of  the  tribunal.  For  Johnson,  though 
for  a  long  time  past  a  distinguished  statesman  in  the 
service  of  the  country  and  at  present  a  United  States 
senator  from  Maryland,  sided  with  the  opposition,  and 
for  that  reason  in  the  view  of  the  court  was  tainted 
with  the  disloyalty  prevalent  in  his  state.  Accord- 
ingly, when,  in  reply  to  an  inquiry  of  the  judge  advo- 
cate, he  declared  his  intention  to  act  as  counsel  for 
Mrs.  Surratt  if  the  court  would  permit  him  to  leave  at 
any  time  to  attend  to  his  duties  in  the  Senate,  General 
Hunter  read  aloud  a  note  sent  him  by  one  of  his 
colleagues  objecting  to  the  admission  of  the  senator 
**on  the  ground  that  he  does  not  recognize  the  moral 
obligation  of  an  oath  that  is  designed  as  a  test  of 
loyalty";  in  support  of  the  objection  citing  Johnson's 
letter  to  the  people  of  his  state  in  the  fall  of  1864 
advising  them  to  take  the  oath  the  convention  had 
prescribed  as  a  condition  precedent  of  the  right  to  vote 
on  the  question  of  the  ratification  of  the  constitution  it 
had  framed.  In  response  to  this  attack,  Johnson  asked 
what  member  of  the  court  made  the  objection ;  and  the 
presiding  officer  thought  proper  to  reply:  *'It  is  Gen- 
eral Harris ;  and  if  he  had  not  made  it,  I  should  have 
made  it  myself."  The  indignant  lawyer  called  for 
the  letter,  and  it  appearing  that  the  objector  relied 
solely  on  his  having  read  it  six  months  or  more  ago, 
protested  that  his  opinion  "could  not  be  tortured  by 


THE    CONSPIEACY    TRIAL  107 

any  reasonable  man  into  any  such  conclusion." 
*' There  is  no  member  of  this  court,  including  the 
President  and  the  member  who  objects,  who  recognizes 
the  obligations  of  an  oath  more  absolutely  than  T  do; 
and  there  is  nothing  in  my  life,  from  its  commence- 
ment to  the  present  time,  which  would  induce  me  for  a 
moment  to  avoid  a  comparison  in  all  moral  respects 
between  myself  and  any  member  of  this  court.  .  .  . 
I  have  lived  too  long,  gone  through  too  many  trials, 
rendered  the  country  such  services  as  my  abilities 
enabled  me  and  the  confidence  of  the  people  in  whose 
midst  I  am  has  given  me  the  opportunity,  to  tolerate 
for  a  moment — come  from  whom  it  may — such  an 
aspersion  upon  my  moral  character.  I  am  glad  it  is 
made  now,  when  I  have  arrived  at  that  period  of  life 
when  it  would  be  unfit  to  notice  it  in  any  other  way." 
He  continued:  "All  that  the  opinion  said,  or  was  in- 
tended to  say,  was,  that  to  take  the  oath  voluntarily 
was  not  a  craven  submission  to  usurped  authority,  but 
was  necessary  in  order  to  enable  the  citizen  to  protect 
his  rights  under  the  then  constitution ;  and  that  there 
was  no  moral  harm  in  taking  an  oath  which  the  con- 
vention had  no  authority  to  impose."  And  he  con- 
cluded: "The  court,  therefore,  or  the  honorable 
member  .  .  .  who  thinks  proper  ...  to  make  this 
objection  and  the  President  who  said  he  should  have 
thought  it  his  duty  to  make  the  objection  if  no  member 
of  the  court  had  done  it,  are  to  understand  that  I  am 
not  pleading  here  for  anything  personal  to  myself. 
I  stand  too  firmly  settled  in  my  own  conviction  of 
honor  and  in  my  own  sense  of  duty,  public  and  private, 


108  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

to  be  alarmed  at  all  at  any  individual  opinion  that 
may  be  expressed;  but  I  ask  the  court  to  decide.  .  .  . 
If  it  shall  be  such  a  decision  as  the  President  seems 
himself  to  be  disposed  to  make,  I  can  take  care  of 
mvself  in  the  future."  General  Harris  here  inter- 
posed  with  the  remark  that  he  could  not  see  that  the 
counsel's  explanation  ''removed  the  difficulty."  '*I 
understand  him  to  say  that  the  doctrine  he  taught  the 
people  ...  was  that  because  the  convention  had 
framed  an  oath  and  required  the  taking  of  that  oath 
as  a  qualification  of  the  right  of  suffrage,  which  oath 
was  unconstitutional  .  .  .  therefore  it  had  no  binding 
force  and  that  the  people  might  take  it  and  then  go 
and  vote  without  any  regard  to  the  subject-matter  of 
the  oath."  Johnson  repudiated  any  such  interpreta- 
tion of  his  teaching,  pointing  out  the  difference  between 
his  saying  ''there  was  no  harm  in  taking  the  oath" 
and  his  "telling  the  people  of  Maryland  there  would 
be  no  harm  in  breaking  it  after  it  was  taken."  And 
then  he  opened  upon  a  new  line :  ' '  But,  it  is  something 
new  to  me  that  the  objection,  if  it  was  well  founded  in 
fact,  is  well  founded  in  law.  .  .  .  Who  gives  to  the 
court  the  jurisdiction  to  decide  upon  the  moral  char- 
acter of  the  counsel  who  may  appear  before  them? 
Who  makes  them  the  arbiters  of  the  public  morality 
and  professional  morality?  What  authority  have 
they  ...  to  rule  me  out,  or  to  rule  any  counsel  out, 
upon  the  ground,  above  all,  that  he  does  not  recognize 
the  validity  of  an  oath,  even  if  they  believe  it!"  Gen- 
eral Harris  calling  attention  to  the  rule  requiring 
counsel  to  take  the  oath  in  court  or  produce  a  certifi- 


THE   CONSPIEACY   TEIAL  109 

cate  of  having  taken  it  elsewhere,  Johnson  subjoined : 
**I  have  taken  the  oath  in  the  Senate  of  the  United 
States — the  very  oath  you  are  administering;  I  have 
taken  it  in  the  Circuit  Court  of  the  United  States;  I 
have  taken  it  in  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United 
States;  .  .  .  and  it  would  be  a  little  singular  if  one 
who  has  a  right  to  appear  before  the  supreme  judicial 
tribunal  of  the  land,  and  who  has  the  right  to  appear 
before  one  of  the  legislative  departments  .  .  .  whose 
law  creates  armies  and  creates  judges  and  court- 
martials,  should  not  have  the  right  to  appear  before  a 
court-martial. ' ' 

As  the  court  was  about  being  cleared  for  delibera- 
tion the  presiding  officer  burst  out :  ' '  Mr.  Johnson  has 
made  an  intimation  in  regard  to  holding  members  of 
this  court  responsible  for  their  action"; — and,  that 
gentleman  disclaiming  any  such  intent,  he  ordered  the 
court  cleared  with  the  remark:  "I  was  going  to  say 
that  I  hoped  the  day  had  passed  when  freeman  from 
the  North  were  to  be  bullied  and  insulted  by  the  hum- 
bug chivalry;  and  that,  for  my  part,  I  hold  myself 
personally  responsible  for  everything  I  do  here." 

On  the  resumption  of  the  session,  General  Harris 
withdrew  his  objection,  avowing  his  gladness  ''to  give 
the  gentleman  the  benefit  of  his  disclaimer,"  but  in- 
sisting that  it  was  "a  tacit  admission  that  there  was 
some  ground  for"  his  own  "view";  and  General 
Wallace,  who  probably  was  ashamed  of  the  whole 
affair,  suggesting  that  every  member  of  the  commis- 
sion must  know  that  the  senator  had  taken  the  oath, 
that  formality  was  dispensed  with  and  the  counsel 


110  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

suffered  to  appear  without  further  oj^position.  The 
mischief,  however,  was  done.  The  woman  on  whose 
behalf  the  senator  gratuitously  tendered  his  services, 
she  being,  as  he  said,  ''a  Maryland  lady,"  was  robbed 
of  the  help  she  might  have  gained  from  the  skill  of  so 
celebrated  an  advocate.  He  himself  apprehending 
that  his  appearance  might  do  her  more  harm  than 
good  gradually  withdrew  from  attendance  on  the  com- 
mission, sending  in  his  argument  on  the  question  of 
jurisdiction  to  be  read  by  one  of  his  juniors.  And  his 
fears  were  not  without  foundation.  Little  as  he  was 
able  to  do  for  his  client  on  the  trial  proper,  his  dem- 
onstration that  the  tribunal  before  which  she  was 
dragged  had  no  right  to  try  her  at  all  subjected  him 
to  be  held  up  in  his  absence  to  ''public  condemnation'* 
by  Judge  Bingham  for  "denouncing  the  murdered 
President  and  his  successor";  making  ''a  political 
harangue,  a  partisan  speech  against  his  government, 
thereby  swelling  the  cry  of  the  armed  legions  of  sedi- 
tion and  rebellion  that  but  yesterday  shook  the 
heavens" — and  doing  ''without  pay"  what  his  "col- 
league"— the  proprietor  of  the  New  York  Daily  News 
— for  $25,000  was  doing  "with  greater  plainness  of 
speech."* 

Another  incident  that  took  place  after  the  testimony 
for  the  defence  began  was,  if  possible,  a  grosser  out- 
rage. Edward  Johnson,  late  a  major-general  in  the 
Confederate  service  and  now  a  prisoner  of  war,  was 
brought  from  Fort  Warren  in  Boston  harbor  to  testify 
in  Mrs.  Surratt's  behalf;  and,  when  he  was  about  to 

*  See  Note  III  to  chapter  in  Appendix. 


THE   CONSPIRACY   TEIAL  111 

take  the  oath,  General  Howe  conceived  it  to  be  his 
duty  as  a  judge  to  interpose  as  follows:  "It  is  well 
known  to  me  .  .  .  that  Edward  Johnson  was  educated 
at  the  national  military  academy  at  the  government's 
expense  and  that  since  that  time  he  held  a  commission 
in  the  army  of  the  United  States.  ...  In  1861  it 
became  my  duty  as  an  officer  to  fire  upon  a  rebel  party, 
of  which  this  man  was  a  member,  and  that  party  fired 
upon,  struck  down,  and  killed  loyal  men  that  were  in 
the  service  of  the  government.  ...  I  understand  he 
is  brought  here  now  as  a  witness  to  testify  before  the 
court,  and  he  comes  here  as  a  witness  with  the  blood  of 
his  loyal  countrymen  shed  by  him  or  by  his  assistance, 
in  violation  of  his  solemn  oath  as  a  man  and  his  faith 
as  an  officer.  I  submit  to  this  court  that  he  stands  in 
the  eye  of  the  law  as  an  incompetent  witness,  because 
he  is  notoriously  infamous.  To  offer  as  a  witness  a 
man  who  stands  with  this  character  ...  is  but  an 
insult  to  the  court  and  an  outrage  upon  the  adminis- 
tration of  justice.  I  move  that  this  man.  Edward 
Johnson,  be  ejected  from  the  court  as  an  incompetent 
witness  on  account  of  his  notorious  infamy  ..."  Gen- 
eral Ekin,  rising  to  second  the  motion  and  overlook- 
ing the  fact  that  the  witness  had  no  alternative  but  to 
come,  characterized  his  appearance  "with  such  a 
character"  as  "the  height  of  impertinence."  One  of 
the  counsel  of  the  prisoner  reminded  the  court  that 
persons  with  just  such  a  "character"  had  been  sworn 
on  behalf  of  the  prosecution,  including  the  very  wit- 
ness General  Johnson  was  called  to  impeach;  and 
Judge  Holt  was  forced  to  instruct  the  commission  that 


112  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

the  laws  required  a  record  of  conviction  to  exclude  the 
witness  though  the  tribunal,  on  the  grounds  stated, 
might  discredit  his  testimony.  Whereupon,  General 
Wallace  expressing  the  hope  that  ''for  the  sake  of 
public  justice"  the  motion  be  withdrawn,  General 
Howe  succumbed,  the  soldier  who  returned  his  fire 
was  sworn  and  the  commission,  to  get  rid  of  his  tes- 
timony, adopted  the  alternative  method  pointed  out 
by  the  judge  advocate. 

Indeed,  throughout  the  entire  trial  the  commission 
acted  upon  the  theory  that  false  swearing  was  to  be 
expected  from  any  witness  for  the  defence  who  had 
participated  in  the  rebellion  either  in  word  or  deed. 
Nay,  the  court  went  still  further  under  the  dictation 
of  the  judge  advocates.  At  one  stage  of  the  proceed- 
ings proof  was  offered  that  Arnold  had  served  in  the 
Confederate  army,  and  Ewing  objected  to  the  tes- 
timony as  tending  to  prove  his  client  guilty  of  a  crime 
for  which  he  was  not  on  trial.  Holt,  in  support  of  his 
offer,  said :  ' '  How  kindred  to  each  other  are  the  crimes 
of  treason  against  the  nation  and  the  assassination  of 
its  chief  magistrate."  "When  we  show  the  accused 
bearing  arms  in  the  field  against  the  government,  we 
show  with  him  the  presence  of  an  animus  toward  the 
government  which  relieves  this  accusation  of  much,  if 
not  all,  of  its  improbability."  Bingham  came  to  the 
assistance  of  his  associate  with  the  rule  that,  the  con- 
spiracy as  charged  being  ''in  aid  of  the  rebellion,"  the 
evidence  offered  was  competent  on  the  question  of 
intent;  demanding:  "When  he  entered  it,  he  entered 
into  it  to  aid  it,  did  he  not?" — and,  Ewing  rejoining: 


THE   CONSPIRACY   TRIAL  113 

''He  did  not  enter  into  that  to  assassinate  the  Presi- 
dent," Bingham,  soaring  to  the  height  of  his  argument, 
launched  forth  the  following  as  a  proposition  of  law: 
*'Yes,  he  entered  into  it  to  assassinate  the  President; 
and  everybody  else  that  entered  into  the  rebellion  en- 
tered into  it  to  assassinate  everybody  that  represented 
the  government,  that  either  followed  the  standard  into 
the  field  or  represented  its  standard  in  the  counsels. 
That  is  exactly  why  it  is  germane ' ' ;  and  the  commission 
so  ruled.*  In  fact,  on  all  questions  of  law  the  court 
followed  the  opinion  of  the  judge  advocates  with  the 
same  docility  as  a  jury  follows  the  judge  in  the  civil 
courts;  and  this  habitual  acquiescence  could  not  but 
lend  a  preponderating  force  to  the  argument  of  these 
officers  on  questions  of  fact.  The  hypothesis  of  a 
widespread  conspiracy  to  take  off  the  heads  of  the 
government  was  accepted  without  question  and  became 
a  convenient  device  to  make  everv  item  of  evidence 
bearing  upon  the  guilt  of  any  individual  named  in  the 
charge,  whether  on  trial  or  not,  tell  as  evidence  against 
all  the  prisoners  at  the  bar.  Union  soldiers  from 
Libby,  Belle  Isle  and  Andersonville  staggered  to  the 
witness  stand  to  testify  concerning  their  ill-treatment 
by  the  Confederates  with  all  its  ghastly  details;  letters 
offering  to  rid  the  world  of  the  South 's  ''deadliest 
enemies"  picked  up  in  the  abandoned  Confederate 
capital ;  the  burning  of  Union  transports  and  bridges ; 
the  raids  from  Canada  over  the  border;  the  plot  to 
introduce  infected  clothing  into  northern  cities;  the 
confession  of  Kennedy,  hung  for  an  attempt  to  burn 

*  Poore,  II,  139-147. 
8 


114  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

New  York: — all  came  in,  first  as  evidence  against 
Jefferson  Davis  and  his  subordinates  on  the  ground 
that  the  perpetrators  of  such  atrocities  were  just  the 
men  to  participate  in  assassination,  and,  secondly,  as 
evidence  against  the  parties  on  trial  on  the  ground 
that  Jefferson  Davis  was  their  co-conspirator.  Walter 
S.  Cox,  the  counsel  of  O'Laughlin  and  Arnold,  in  his 
final  argument  spoke  of  the  charge  as  follows:  ''It 
described  one  offence  of  some  kind,  but,  however 
specific  in  form,  it  seems  to  have  been  intended,  like  a 
purser's  shirt,  to  fit  every  conceivable  form  of  crime 
which  the  wickedness  of  man  can  devise.  The  crime 
is  laid  in  Washington,  yet  we  have  wandered  far 
away.  .  .  .  We  have  been  carried  to  the  purlieus  of 
Toronto  and  Montreal,  skirted  the  border  of  New 
York  and  Vermont,  passed  down  the  St.  Lawrence  and 
out  to  sea;  visited  the  fever  hospitals  of  the  British 
Islands,  returned  to  the  prison  pen  of  Andersonville ; 
penetrated  the  secret  counsels  of  Richmond;  passed 
thence  to  the  hospitals  of  the  West,  ascended  the 
Mississippi  and,  at  length,  terminated  this  eccentric 
career  in  the  woods  of  New  York";  and,  with  a  fine 
irony  which,  now  that  it  is  seen  to  have  been  deserved, 
reddens  the  cheek  with  shame,  subjoined:  "I  cannot 
for  a  moment  suppose  that  the  object  was  to  inflame 
prejudice  against  the  accused  because  of  the  ren:iote 
connection  with  the  authors  of  all  these  evils  and,  for 
want  of  higher  victims,  to  make  them  the  scapegoats 
for  all  the  atrocities  imputed  to  the  rebellion;  to 
immolate  them  to  hush  the  clamors  of  the  public  for  a 
victim  .  .  .  ; — for  such  a  proceeding  would  disgrace 


THE   CONSPIRACY   TRIAL  115 

this  government  in  the  eyes  of  all  Christendom  as 
much  as  assassination  would  disgrace  the  spurious 
government  which  has  just  vanished  into  thin  air."* 

The  direct  testimony  for  the  prosecution  closed  on 
the  twenty-third  day  of  May;  a  little  over  nine  work- 
ing days  having  been  consumed,  and  one  hundred  and 
thirty-one  witnesses  examined,  of  whom  the  testimony 
of  seventeen  was  directed  against  Payne  particularly, 
of  ten  against  Atzerodt,  of  nineteen  against  Mudd,  of 
eleven  against  O'Laughlin,  of  eight  against  Arnold,  of 
four  against  Spangler,  and  of  seven  against  Mrs. 
Surratt,  making  in  all  sixty-eight.  Of  the  remaining 
sixty-three,  the  testimony  was  directed  to  incidents 
immediately  connected  with  the  assassination  and  to 
the  complicity  of  the  Confederate  officials.  The  testi- 
mony for  the  defence  closed  formally  on  the  tenth  of 
June,  having  occupied  parts  of  the  intervening  work- 
ing days.  About  one  hundred  and  twenty-eight  wit- 
nesses were  sworn,  besides  the  witnesses  to  the  general 
conspiracy  interspersed  by  the  judge  advocate  nearly 
every  session.  Four  more  days  were  taken  up  in 
rebuttal  and  then  (the  sixteenth)  the  argument  of 
counsel  began. 

On  behalf  of  Herold,  Payne  and  Atzerodt  no  defence 
was  possible.  Associated  as  Herold  was  with  Booth 
in  his  flight  and  capture,  the  plea  that  he  lent  no  aid  to 
his  principal  in  the  article  of  crime  could  not  avail  him. 
For  Payne,  the  same  plea  was  interposed  that  he  him- 
self uttered  when  dealing  his  death  blows;  but,  though 
it  was  shown  that  his  intellect  was  weak  and  sluggish, 

*  Pitman,  333-4.     See  Note  IV  to  chapter  in  Appendix. 


116  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

and  he  was  subject  to  fits  of  unbridled  rage,  no  doubt 
was  thrown  on  his  sanity  within  the  definition  of  the 
law.  Atzerodt,  doubtless,  did  nothing  in  pursuance 
of  the  part  thrust  upon  him  at  the  last  moment;  but 
his  guilty  knowledge  of  the  bloody  work  going  on  left 
no  room  for  mercy.  On  the  other  hand,  for  the  four 
other  male  prisoners,  defences  were  put  up  strong 
enough  to  break  up  the  unanimity  of  the  commission 
and  even  to  shake  the  self-confidence  of  the  judge 
advocates.  In  Arnold's  case,  all  the  evidence  against 
him  pointed  to  his  participation  in  the  abandoned  plot ; 
there  was  not  a  scintilla  that  he  knew  anything  of  a 
design  to  assassinate — that  idea  first  entering  Booth's 
head  after  this  prisoner  had  sought  and  found  employ- 
ment at  Fort  Monroe.  O'Laughlin,  his  yoke-fellow  in 
the  plot  to  capture,  was  present,  as  it  happened  in  the 
capital  on  Thursday  and  Friday  nights  of  the  fatal 
week;  but  his  whereabouts  were  so  clearly  and 
minutely  traced  by  witness  after  witness  of  unexcep- 
tionable loyalty  that  even  the  commission  declined  to 
follow  Bingham  in  identifying  him  with  the  stranger 
who  was  to  dispose  of  Greneral  Grant.  Spangler  and 
Mudd  could  not  boast  of  so  clean  a  bill  of  health. 
Spangler,  according  to  a  preponderance  of  the  evi- 
dence, had  no  hand  in  tampering  with  the  doors  of  the 
President's  box  or  in  providing  the  means  to  bar  an 
entrance  from  the  outside ;  but  there  was  testimony  to 
the  effect  that  he  tried  to  check  the  instant  pursuit 
and  hush  up  the  identification  of  the  assassin.  Simi- 
larly, in  the  case  of  Doctor  Mudd,  though  the  insidious 
attempt  of  Wiechmann  to  connect  him  with  the  plot  ta 


THE    CONSPIRACY   TRIAL  117 

capture  came  to  naught,  the  testimony  of  the  detec- 
tives, colored  though  it  was  by  the  hope  of  reward, 
left  two  questions  doubtful ;  whether  the  doctor  recog- 
nized Booth  when  he  set  his  leg,  and  whether,  after  he 
learned  of  the  assassination,  he  suppressed  the  fact  of 
the  harboring  of  the  fugitives. 

So  much  for  the  seven  men ;  now  for  the  one  woman. 
It  will  not  be  denied  that  her  case  was  one  which,  for 
the  sake  of  common  decency,  if  from  no  higher  con- 
sideration, it  behooved  the  prosecution  to  so  handle  as 
to  avoid  even  the  slightest  semblance  of  prejudgment. 
Yet  it  was  upon  her  case  that  the  joint  trial  bore  with 
the  most  deadly  effect.  To  try  a  woman,  a  civilian,  a 
householder  of  Washington  city,  by  a  tribunal  of  sol- 
diers, was  a  thing  hitherto  unheard  of;  to  hook  her 
fast  to  the  same  chain  with  Arnold  and  O'Laughlin 
whom  she  had  never  seen,  with  Herold  and  Atzerodt 
and  PajTie  whose  guilt  was  taken  as  a  matter  of  course, 
and,  in  addition,  to  make  her  a  partner  with  Jefferson 
Davis  in  the  atrocities  alleged  to  have  been  perpetrated 
in  his  name;  this  was  simply  disrobing  her  of  her  sex 
preparatory  to  handing  her  over  to  the  executioner. 
The  only  evidence  against  her  of  any  weight — without 
which  the  Bureau  would  not  have  ventured  to  arraign 
her  in  such  company — bore  no  relation  whatever  to  the 
plot  to  capture  and,  if  it  showed  anything  in  regard 
to  the  matter,  showed  she  knew  nothing  of  the  project 
in  which  her  son  was  so  active  a  participant.  The 
evidence  on  which  the  Bureau  mainly  relied  consisted 
of  incidents  of  the  week  of  the  assassination  and  tended 
to  prove  her  an  accomplice  in  that  foul  deed.     The 


118  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABKAHAM  LINCOLN 

non-recognition  of  Payne,  on  the  night  of  her  arrest — 
the  only  other  circumstance  on  which  great  stress  was 
laid — was,  as  we  have  already  intimated,  divested  of 
most,  if  not  all,  its  criminating  significance  by  the 
testimony  of  one  of  the  two  leading  officers  who  were 
present  on  the  occasion.  The  incidents  which  in  fact 
constituted  the  gist  of  the  evidence  against  the  woman 
took  place  on  two  drives  to  Surrattsville — one  on 
Tuesday  the  eleventh  and  the  other  on  Friday  the 
fourteenth  of  April — when  she  was  escorted  by  her 
favorite  among  the  boarders  at  her  house.  This  man 
and  her  tenant  at  the  tavern  were  the  two  wit- 
nesses, both  implicated  in  the  conspiracy  and  both 
testifying  in  peril  of  their  lives.  Lloyd,  after  his 
arrest,  and  Wiechmann,  after  his  interview  with 
Stanton  and  his  imprisonment,  alike  sought  safety  in 
shifting  the  load  weighing  themselves  to  the  earth 
upon  the  shoulders  of  the  mother  of  the  co-conspirator 
still  at  large.  Lloyd,  sodden  with  drink  and  unmanned 
by  terror,  crying  aloud:  "That  vile  woman!  She  has 
ruined  me,"  revealed  clearly  his  purpose;  but  Wiech- 
mann, the  likelihood  of  a  pardon  having  quieted  his 
nerves,  proceeded  with  feline  caution.  When  he  heard 
of  the  assassination  from  the  police  searching  the 
house  for  Booth  and  Surratt,  he  exclaimed:  ** Great 
God!  I  see  it  all  now";  and  he  saw  it  all  to  the  end. 
Apparently  with  the  utmost  frankness,  he  put  himself 
in  the  very  focus  of  the  conspiracy,  associating  con- 
vivially  with  the  conspirators,  present  at  their  half- 
veiled  consultations,  surprising  them  at  drill  with  their 
"weapons;  but,  as  he  would  have  you  bear  in  mind, 


THE    CONSPIRACY    TRIAL  119 

merely  as  a  hoodwinked  looker-on,  an  innocent  spy 
upon  his  comrades  that  they  might  not  escape  their 
fitting  doom.  At  moments  in  liis  fluent  narrative  when 
his  own  implication  seems  inevitable,  he  suddenly 
shies  away,  disappointing  the  hearer  of  the  expected 
catastrophe,  leaving  his  evidence  inconclusive  while 
pointing  out  the  way  to  corroboration.  For  example : 
both  trips  to  Surrattsville  were  on  business  that  im- 
peratively called  for  Mrs.  Surratt's  attention,  and  was 
in  fact  transacted  with  the  assistance  of  the  witness; 
but  in  his  description  of  each  journey  he  interweaves 
incidents  which,  while  passing  harmless  by  himself, 
were  calculated  to  cast  suspicion  on  his  companion. 
On  Tuesday,  on  the  way  down,  they  met  Lloyd — and 
Lloyd  held  a  conversation  with  Mrs.  Surratt  in  so  low 
a  tone  that  Wiechmann  sitting  beside  her  failed  to 
overhear  it.  Again,  on  Friday,  at  about  two  o'clock 
in  the  afternoon,  the  carriage  to  take  them  being  at  the 
door.  Booth  came  in,  remained  a  few  minutes,  and  left 
a  package  (subsequently  shown  to  have  contained  the 
field-glass  Booth  called  for  in  his  flight)  which  was 
deposited  on  the  bottom  of  the  buggy  and  carried  to 
Surrattsville;  in  the  evening  when  about  to  return 
home  without  seeing  Lloyd,  who  was  absent  attend- 
ing court  at  the  county  seat,  they  (having  given 
the  package  to  his  sister-in-law)  discovered  that  the 
axle  of  their  vehicle  was  broken;  and  the  tavern 
keeper,  arriving  during  the  interval  of  delay  occa- 
sioned by  the  accident,  held  a  conversation  with  Mrs. 
Surratt  alone  in  the  back  yard  as  he  alighted  from  his 
wagon.     Thus  far  Wiechmann;  and  on  this  trial  he 


120  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

went  no  farther,  leaving  two  significant  gaps  for  his 
partner  in  turning  state's  evidence  to  fill.  Lloyd,  on 
the  other  hand,  who,  having  served  for  a  time  on  the 
police  of  the  capital,  tiillj  realized  the  plight  he  was 
in,  first  confessed  to  the  officer  who  took  him  in  custody 
and  who  subsequently  boasted  he  extorted  the  confes- 
sion "through  strategy,"*  that  when  Mrs.  Surratt  met 
him  in  the  back  yard  she  handed  him  the  field-glass 
and  told  him  ' '  to  have  those  shooting  irons  ready  that 
night;  parties  would  call  for  them";  but  he  made  no 
mention  of  any  meeting  on  Tuesday.  It  was  not  until 
he  joined  Wiechmann  in  Carroll  prison  that  he  was 
reminded  of  the  conversation  which  Wiechmann  was 
too  loyal  to  listen  to.  His  advanced  state  of  intoxica- 
tion at  the  moment  he  met  Mrs.  Surratt  on  Friday 
discredited  his  report  of  the  conversation  on  that  day, 
and,  therefore,  an  appeal  was  made  from  the  witness 
when  drunk  to  the  witness  when  sober.  On  the  Surratt 
Trial,  Lloyd  testified  that  while  he  was  in  Carroll 
prison,  a  military  officer  (who  resembled  General  Fos- 
ter of  the  commission),  irritated  at  the  lack  of  "full- 
ness" in  his  statement,  told  him  he  was  "guilty  as  an 
accessory  to  a  crime,  the  punishment  of  which  was 
death";!  and  it  was  probably  under  some  such  pres- 
sure as  this  that  he  yielded  up  the  contents  of  the 
conversation  of  Tuesday:  "She  told  me  to  get  the 
shooting  irons  ready;  they  would  be  wanted  soon." 
The  meeting  taking  place  on  the  highway,  and  the  only 
outside  person  having  turned  a  deaf  ear  to  the  words 

*  See  Note  V  to  chapter  in  Appendix. 
t  S.  T.,  290. 


THE    CONSPIRACY   TRIAL  121 

used,  the  unfortunate  woman,  her  own  mouth  being 
sealed,  was  completely  at  the  mercy  of  the  craven 
informer,  and  could  only  point  to  the  improbability  of 
her  being  intrusted  with  a  message  so  wholly  uncalled 
for.  Friday's  conversation,  as  given  by  Lloyd,  dis- 
credited though  it  was  by  his  condition,  at  least  con- 
stituted a  link  in  a  chain  of  events  having  a  logical 
antecedent  and  a  logical  consequence.  Tuesday's 
stood  isolated — brought  about,  so  far  as  appears,  by 
no  incident  before  and  leading  to  none  after — a  com- 
mon badge  of  manufactured  evidence.* 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  managers  of  the  Bureau 
would  never  have  dragged  this  poor  woman  before  the 
commission  instead  of  these  two  main  witnesses 
against  her,  had  it  not  been  for  the  expectation  that 
her  arraignment  would  serve  as  a  decoy  to  a  much 
more  prominent  conspirator.  It  was  not  the  mother 
they  were  after,  it  was  the  son.  According  to  the 
hypothesis  with  which  they  were  infatuated,  John  H. 
Surratt  was,  next  to  Booth,  the  moving  spirit  of  the 
assassination  conspiracy.  In  spite  of  every  indication 
to  the  contrary,  they  persisted  in  believing  that  he  was 
present  on  the  scene,  actively  aiding  and  abetting  the 
actual  perpetrator  of  the  crime.  Among  his  numerous 
friends,  acquaintances,  the  tradesmen  with  whom  he 
dealt  in  the  capital  and  the  witnesses  whose  testimony 
implicated  him  in  the  plot  to  capture,  not  one,  not  even 
Wiechmann,  had  set  eyes  on  him  since  his  departure 
for  Canada  in  the  early  morning  of  the  fourth  of 

*  Lincoln's  speech,  which  in  all  probability  set  the  assassin  in  motion, 
was  not  made  imtil  Tuesday  night.     See  Chap.  II,  p.  40. 


122  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABR'AHAM  LINCOLN 

April.  Detectives  found  trace  of  him  in  Montreal  on 
the  twelfth  and  again  on  the  eighteenth,  but  not  one 
could  they  find  during  the  interval.  At  the  moment 
when  the  blood  of  Lincoln  was  being  shed  inside  the 
theatre,  when  Payne  was  wreaking  his  fury  on  the 
Seward  household,  when  such  minor  accomplices  as 
Herold  and  Atzerodt  and  Spangler  were  to  the  fore, 
and  even  the  as  yet  unidentified  stranger  who  called 
the  hour*  was  playing  his  part,  the  twin  leader  with 
Booth  failed  to  put  in  an  appearance, — left  his  role,  if 
any  were  assigned  him,  vacant.  One  witness  and  but 
one,  they  did  unearth — a  merchant  tailor,  acquainted 
with  Surratt  in  his  boyhood  but  never  having  ex- 
changed a  word  with  him  in  his  life;  who  testified  that 
at  half-past  two  in  the  afternoon  of  the  fourteenth  he 
recognized  the  young  man  walking  up  the  avenue,  his 
attention  being  specially  attracted  by  the  neatness  of 
his  attire  and  the  bran-new  spurs  he  wore.f 

Upon  this  frail  foundation  the  Bureau  erected  its 
case  against  the  son  of  the  woman  the  court  was  to 
condemn  in  his  stead.  As  outlined  by  the  special 
judge  advocate,  it  was  as  follows :  When  Surratt  went 
to  Richmond  on  the  twenty-fifth  of  March,  his  mission 
was  'Ho  get  funds  to  carry  out  the  conspiracy;  he 
brought  back  with  him  gold,  the  price  of  blood"; 
immediately  he  went  to  Canada  ''with  despatches  from 
Jefferson  Davis  to  Jacob  Thompson  approving  the 
conspiracy" ;  and  while  he  was  there,  "Thompson  drew 
from  the  bank  $180,000  of  the  rebel  funds  on  deposit." 

*  Dye 's  testimony  on  both  trials. 
tPoore,  I,  170;  Pitman,  138. 


THE    CONSPIRACY    TRIAL  123 

**This  beiDg  done,  Surratt  finding  it  safer  to  go  to 
Canada  for  the  great  bulk  of  the  funds  to  be  dis- 
tributed among  these  hired  assassins  than  to  attempt 
to  carry  it  through  our  lines  direct  to  Richmond, 
immediately  returned  to  Washington  and  was  present 
in  this  city  .  .  .  booted  and  spurred,  ready  for  flight 
whenever  the  fatal  blow  was  struck.  If  he  was  not  a 
conspirator,  how  comes  it  that  from  that  hour  to  this, 
no  man  had  seen  him  in  the  capital,  nor  has  he  been 
reported  anywhere  outside  of  Canada — having  arrived 
in  Montreal  on  the  eighteenth,  four  days  after  the 
murder?  Nothing  but  his  conscious  coward  guilt  could 
possibly  induce  him  to  absent  himself  from  his  mother, 
as  he  does  upon  this  trial."  According  to  the  counsel, 
his  were  'Hhe  retreating  footsteps"  heard  by  the  wit- 
ness Wiechmann,  "at  about  half-past  eight  in  the 
evening"  of  the  fatal  Friday,  when  the  son  paid  "the 
secret  and  last  visit  to  his  mother  who  had  instigated 
and  encouraged  him  to  strike  this  traitorous  and  mur- 
derous blow  against  his  country."* 

On  Friday,  June  the  sixteenth,  the  argument  of 
Reverdy  Johnson,  adverse  to  the  jurisdiction  of  the 
tribunal,  was  read  by  his  associate,  Mr.  Clampitt;  and, 
on  the  succeeding  Friday,  General  Ewing  addressed 
the  commission  on  the  same  subject,  the  consideration 
of  which  is  postponed  until  another  chapter.  The 
sessions  intervening  and  the  two  after  the  twenty- 
third  were  taken  up  by  the  summing  up  of  the  testi- 
mony by  the  counsel  for  the  accused.  The  plea  for 
Herold  was  submitted  "at  the  earnest  request  of  his 

*  See  Note  VI  to  chapter  in  Appendix. 


iL^  ASSAS^IVATTON  OF  -^  ~  -~AV  LTN'OILX 

wiizTTei  n::l^r  mi  ^iTinLi.^  =:?T^rs":  :i:  zi^  end  of 
il-  A-—o:  -  -  of 

tLiT  ;r_-    _-        _     -  _      •     ~         -  '     ^    L  -^e 

"lokii:^: ;  .  _         \    „    ^  '    -plot 

ilL     lie       -      '    :    J:.--"!-    ~    -  ;::_    :>       --t-jh 


t  -   :- 


e.~i   ~   ■  __r                     is  of           tT  v>.  Lox  may  oe 

s .    "  '   -    -  ■ '     '  - '    '  -  -   ii-z "  :  -'   T  of  Arnold 

EZ  _    ^    1       Z.     "  '   '  —  y  tkaji  tiift 

^ : :      1  -  -  7  -  - ;  -  -  _._  -_--—     :  -__  -— '^i::^  by 


-  r  _  Tiore  t: 


THE   CONSPIEACT    TBIAL  125 

he  was  allowed  to  repair  to  Washington :  and  the 
Bnrean  could  do  no  less  than  to  afford  its  prize  witness 
an  opportanity  to  explain.  Accordingly,  the  flow  of 
forensic  eloquence  was  interrupted  while  this  detected 
spv.  with  unabashed  forehead,  told  how  his  affi«lavit 
and  his  offer  of  reward  for  his  own  arrest  were 
extorted  from  him  at  the  muzzle  of  a  rebel's  pistol. 

Conover's  self -vindication  being  complete,  the  field 
was  clear  for  Bingham  to  enter  upon  the  discharge  of 
the  function  for  which  he  was  specially  retained. 
Under  military  procedure,  the  ittiaI  argument  of  a 
judge  advocate  c-orresponds  to  the  charge  of  a  judge 
in  jury  trials  rather  than  to  the  summing  up  of 
counsel:  but  the  address  of  this  member  oi  :-ie 
commission  was  decidedly  non  judidaL  The  crinie 
c-ommitted  was  "not  simply  the  murder  of  a  hmnsn 
being,"  but  ''a  combination  of  atrocities*'  committed 
"upon  the  instigation  of  Jefferson  Davis"  and  his 
agents  in  Canada.  In  one  respect  lif  ~as  strictly 
impartial:  every  one  of  the  conspirators — :h:?.r  on 
trial  and  those  absent — was  guilty  beyond  the  slightest 
shadow  of  doubt.  "Who  doubts,"  he  asks,  "that 
Kennedy  was  commissioned  by  the  accredited  agents  of 
Jefferson  Davis  to  bum  the  city  of  New  York*- '  that 
"Davis  by  his  agents  ,  .  ,  adopted  a  syston  of  starva- 
tion of  our  soldiers,  .  .  ,  paid  money  for  the  import- 
ing of  pestilaice  into  our  camp  and  cities ?"  "It  only 
rfamaius  to  be  seen."  he  continues,  wbedier  this  "pro- 
curer of  arson  and  of  the  indiscrizriz?.te  murder  of  the 
innoc-ent  and  unoffending  was  />  ...  of  direct 

assassination."    And.  in  this  c>:_:-    don,  he  dtes  tke 


126  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

testimony  of  Conover,  whom  lie  holds  up  before  the 
commission  as  a  model  witness  whose  credibility  is 
beyond  question.  Not  only  Payne,  Herold  and  At- 
zerodt,  but  Arnold,  O'Laughlin,  Mudd,  Spangler  and 
Mary  E.  Surratt  are  brought  within  the  compass  of 
the  counsel's  sweeping  condemnation.  Arnold,  so  far 
from  withdrawing  from  the  plot,  went  to  Fort  Monroe 
to  wait  for  the  arrival  of  funds  from  Richmond  or  for 
Booth's  signal.  ''Wlio  doubts,"  he  asks,  "that  Booth, 
having  ascertained  in  the  course  of  the  day  that  Gen- 
eral Grant  would  not  be  present  at  the  theatre, 
O  'Laughlin  who  was  to  murder  General  Grant,  instead 
of  entering  the  box  with  Booth,  was  to  lie  in  wait  and 
watch  to  support  him  ?  His  denial  that  he  knew  noth- 
ing of  the  affair  is  as  false  and  inexcusable  as  Peter's 
denial  of  our  Lord. ' '  Mudd,  according  to  the  counsel, 
was  present  in  Washington  ' '  on  the  day  preceding  the 
inauguration,  when  Booth  was  to  strike  the  traitorous 
blow,  ...  to  abet,  to  encourage,  to  nerve  his  co-con- 
spirator for  the  commission  of  this  great  crime." 
*' Spangler 's  complicity"  is  clear:  he  provided  the  bar, 
cut  the  mortise  in  the  wall,  loosened  the  locks  of  the 
boxes,  and  *' undertook  and  promised  to  do"  what 
Chester  refused.  "It  is  almost  imposing  upon  the 
patience  of  the  court,"  the  counsel  remarks,  "to  con- 
sume time  in  demonstrating  the  fact,  which  none 
conversant  with  the  testimony  in  this  case  can  for  a 
moment  doubt,  that  John  H.  Surratt  and  Mary  E. 
Surratt  were  as  surely  in  the  conspiracy  to  murder  the 
President  as  was  John  Wilkes  Booth  himself."  He 
scouts  the  idea  that  there  ever  was  a  "purpose  to 


THE    CONSPIRACY   TRIAL  127 

abduct  the  President  and  take  him  South/'  holding  it 
up  to  derision  as  *' another  silly  device  like  that  of  the 
*oil  business'  ";  scorning  '*to  waste  time  in  combating 
such  an  absurdity";  disposing  of  Wiechmann's  ac- 
count of  the  actual  attempt  that  failed,  as  follows: 
*'Wlien  these  parties  left  the  house  that  day,  it  was 
with  the  full  purpose  of  completing  some  act  essential 
to  the  final  execution  of  the  work  of  assassination.  .  .  . 
Thej^  returned,  foiled — for  what  cause  is  unknown — 
dejected,  angry  and  covered  with  confusion."* 

This  impassioned  appeal  for  the  condemnation  of 
every  one  of  the  prisoners  at  the  bar  closed  the  case. 

*  See  Note  VII  to  thig  chapter  in  Appendix. 


CHAPTER   V 

The  Findings,  Sentences  and  Execution 

When  the  court  reassembled  on  Thursday,  the 
tTventy-ninth  of  June,  the  prisoners'  dock  and  the  table 
of  their  counsel  were  empty ;  even  the  official  reporters 
were  excluded;  the  doors  were  locked  and  the  guard 
stationed  outside.  But  the  counsel  for  the  govern- 
ment, who  for  two  months  had  bent  all  their  energies 
to  convince  the  tribunal  of  the  guilt  of  the  defendants, 
including  the  special  judge  advocate  who  had  just 
exhausted  his  celebrated  oratorical  powers  in  winding 
up  the  patriotic  prejudices  of  its  members  to  the 
highest  pitch,  were  present  and  permitted  to  take  a 
leading  part  in  making  up  the  judgment ;  a  judgment 
which,  under  the  rules  of  military  procedure,  com- 
prised not  only  the  finding  of  the  verdict,  but  also  the 
meting  out  of  the  punishment.  Of  what  took  place 
in  that  third-story  room  we  have  only  the  formal 
record  now  on  file  in  the  office  of  the  judge  advocate 
general ;  a  document  meagre  in  the  extreme,  but  from 
which  we  may  gather,  with  the  aid  of  plausible  con- 
jecture, the  line  of  discussion  and  the  partial  revolt  of 
some  members  of  the  commission  from  the  guidance 
of  the  judge  advocates  that  necessitated  a  prolongation 
of  the  session  into  the  second  day.  The  first  day, 
from  the  hour  of  ten  in  the  morning  until  six  in 
the  evening,  was  consumed  in  deliberating  "upon  the 

(128) 


FINDINGS   AND   EXECUTION  129 

evidence  in  the  case  of  each  of  the  accused"  in  the 
order  named  in  the  Charge,  from  Herold  to  Mudd ;  in 
finding  all,  except  Spangler,  guilty  of  the  conspiracy 
as  charged ;  and  in  affixing  the  sentences,  except  in  the 
case  of  Mudd,  the  consideration  of  whose  case  was 
interrupted  by  the  adjournment.  It  is  probable,  how- 
ever, that  on  the  first  day  a  mere  memorandum  of  the 
decisions  of  the  court  was  noted  down,  the  formal 
record  not  being  drawn  up  until  the  labors  of  the 
commission  were  concluded.  No  doubt  seems  to  have 
been  entertained  that  the  assassination  was  the 
product  of  a  widespread  conspiracy  premeditated  for 
several  months,  since  the  commission  found  Jefferson 
Davis  and  his  Canadian  agents  as  well  as  John  H. 
Surratt  to  have  been  co-conspirators  of  the  defendants. 
Herold,  Atzerodt  and  Payne,  it  is  clear,  were  found 
guilty  of  both  Charge  and  Specification  without  debate, 
and  sentenced  to  be  hanged  by  the  neck  until  dead, 
nem.  con.  But  the  case  of  O'Laughlin,  coming  next, 
occasioned  the  first  symptom  of  a  disinclination  on  the 
part  of  some  members  of  the  tribunal  to  follow  the 
sweeping  condemnation  of  Judge  Bingham.  They 
were  willing  to  find  this  prisoner  guilty  of  the  Charge 
in  general,  but  a  majority  refused  to  find  him  guilty 
of  that  part  of  the  Specification  which  charged  him 
with  lying  in  wait  for  General  Grant — the  only  part  in 
the  conspiracy  he  was  accused  of  having  undertaken. 
Moreover,  in  affixing  the  sentence  the  two-thirds  vote 
required  for  the  death  penalty  could  not  be  secured 
and  O'Laughlin  who,  under  the  evidence,  ought  to 
have  been  acquitted,  got  off  with  imprisonment  for  life. 

9 


130  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

**The  testimony  of  Spangler's  complicity"  seemed  by 
no  means  so  ''conclusive"  to  the  commission  as  to 
Judge  Bingham,  a  majority  being  in  favor  of  limiting 
his  guilt  to  having  been  an  accessory  after  the  fact; 
and,  in  his  case,  accordingly,  death  was  out  of  the 
question,  and  the  majority  astonished  the  special  judge 
advocate  by  imposing  so  slight  a  sentence  as  six  years' 
imprisonment.  In  the  three  succeeding  cases — Ar- 
nold's, Mrs.  Surratt's  and  Mudd's — the  commission 
found  the  prisoners  guilty  of  both  Charge  and  Speci- 
fication, as  it  had  done  in  the  cases  of  Herold,  Atzerodt 
and  Payne ;  and  yet  the  majority  persisted  in  the  dis- 
inclination to  take  any  more  lives.  The  holocaust  was 
ample  enough,  they  seem  to  have  thought.  In  Arnold's 
case,  the  six  voices  required  could  not  be  persuaded 
to  speak  the  fatal  word,  and  life  imprisonment  was 
decreed  in  its  stead.  The  hot  midsummer  day  was 
drawing  to  a  close  when  the  doom  of  the  single  female 
culprit  came  up  for  consideration.  Through  the  long- 
days  of  the  trial  she  sat  in  her  isolated  corner,  if  un- 
fettered, only  so  in  homage  to  her  sex  and  because  of 
her  widowed  motherhood; — an  object  of  pity  to  both 
gods  and  men.  Guilty,  it  is  true,  the  court  had  found 
her,  but  of  the  same  grade  of  crime  as  Arnold's, 
O'Laughlin's  and  Mudd's.  No  reason  whatever  is 
apparent  why  the  majority,  especially  in  the  case  of  a 
woman,  should  abandon  the  course  of  clemency  they 
had  entered  upon  and  revert  to  the  severity  they  had 
inflicted  without  question  on  such  outlaws  as  Herold, 
Atzerodt  and  Payne.  Again,  therefore,  the  six  voices 
were  wanting.     Four  voted  for  the  extreme  penalty, 


FINDINGS   AND   EXECUTION  131 

as  in  all  likelihood  they  had  voted  in  the  cases  of 
Arnold  and  O'Laughlin;  but  five  continued  to  lean  to 
the  side  of  mercy  and  undoubtedly  would  have  gone 
on  and  done  in  the  case  of  the  woman  what  they  had 
done  in  the  cases  of  the  two  men — that  is,  imposed  the 
milder  punishment — had  it  not  been  for  the  interposi- 
tion of  the  judge  advocates.  These  three  officers,  as 
well  as  the  Secretary  of  War  whose  obedient  servants 
they  were,  if  we  are  to  judge  from  the  address  of  the 
one  who  was  the  mouthpiece  of  the  prosecution,  must 
have  been  opposed  to  the  exercise  of  clemency  towards 
any  one  of  the  prisoners;  in  which  respect,  in  all 
probability,  they  were  sustained  by  a  minority  of  the 
commission.  And,  in  the  case  of  Mrs.  Surratt,  their 
opposition  was  greatly  intensified  by  the  escape  of  her 
son.  They  had  failed  to  move  the  majority  in  the 
contested  cases  of  the  men;  but  in  the  case  of  the 
woman  they  were  reinforced  by  an  additional  con- 
sideration which  they  brought  into  play  with  telling 
effect.  Clemency  to  her,  they  argued,  would  be  of  evil 
example;  the  women  of  the  South  were  worse  rebels 
than  the  men ;  above  all,  to  save  the  life  of  the  mother 
was  to  allow  the  son  to  go  unwhipped  of  justice.  We 
can  almost  hear  the  voices  of  Holt  and  Bingham  as 
they  exhorted  in  these  terms  the  too  soft-hearted 
members  of  the  court ;  nevertheless,  as  we  have  a  right 
to  infer,  the  majority  stood  firm;  so  much  so  that  it 
became  necessary  to  bring  forward  a  final  suggestion. 
The  President  was  in  full  command  of  the  situation; 
his  approval  must  be  given  before  the  sentence  could 
be  executed ;  let  him,  therefore,  take  the  responsibility ; 


132  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

sex  and  age  will  appeal  to  him  no  less  powerfully  than 
to  your  own  chivalrous  hearts,  and  that,  too,  at  the 
proper  moment,  for  he  and  he  alone  can  hold  the  fate 
of  the  mother  in  terrorem  over  the  fugitive  son.* 
Under  this  heavy  pressure,  two  at  least  of  the  five 
come  over;  and  Mary  E.  Surratt  is  sentenced  'Ho  he 
hanged  hy  the  neck  until  she  is  dead  .  .  .  ;  two  thirds 
of  the  commission  concurring  therein.^ ^  It  is  now  six 
o'clock.  The  commission  adjourns  until  to-morrow; 
and  the  judge  advocates  hurry  to  the  War  Office  to 
report  to  their  chief.  The  next  morning  the  court 
resumes  its  secret  deliberations;  and  the  majority, 
still  bent  on  clemency,  sentence  Doctor  Mudd  to  im- 
prisonment for  life.  This  act  completes  the  labors  of 
the  commission.  The  official  record  is  then  made  up 
from  the  memorandum;  signed  by  ^'D.  Hunter"  and 
countersigned  by  ^'J.  Holt."  There  must  have  taken 
place  among  the  members,  however,  a  discussion,  the 
outcome  of  which  does  not  appear  in  the  record  itself. 
It  is  plain  that  the  officers  favoring  clemency  toward 
Mrs.  Surratt  were  not  content  to  leave  the  question  of 
commutation  to  the  naked  discretion  of  the  executive, 
but  were  determined  that  their  own  predisposition 
should  be  embodied  in  a  petition  to  be  brought  to  the 
attention  of  the  President  at  the  same  time  with  the 
recorded  sentence.  Such  a  demand,  under  the  cir- 
cumstances, could  not  very  well  be  gainsaid,  and,  there- 
fore, Bingham,  much  against  the  grain,  redacts  upon 
a  loose  piece  of  paper  the  following  attenuated  prayer : 

*  See  Note  I  to  this  chapter  in  Appendix. 


FINDINGS   AND   EXECUTION  133 


id 


'The  undersigned,  members  of  the  Military  Commission 
detailed  to  try  Mary  E.  Surratt  and  others  for  the  Conspiracy 
and  the  murder  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  late  President  of  the 
United  States  &c.,  respectfully  pray  the  President,  in  con- 
sideration of  the  sex  and  age  of  the  said  Mary  E.  Surratt, 
if  he  can,  upon  all  the  facts  in  the  case,  find  it  consistent 
with  his  sense  of  duty  to  the  country,  to  commute  the  sentence 
of  death,  which  the  Court  have  been  constrained  to  pronounce, 
to  imprisonment  in  the  penitentiary  for  life. 

Respectfully  submitted ' ' 

General  Ekin  makes  a  fair  copy  on  legal-cap  paper, 
to  which  the  five  affix  their  names :  D.  Hunter,  August 
V.  Kautz,  E.  S.  Foster,  James  A.  Ekin,  Clias.  H. 
Tompkins; — Ekin  retaining  the  draft  as  a  memento 
of  the  occasion.  The  record  and  petition  are  placed 
in  the  hands  of  Colonel  Burnett;  an  adjournment  is 
taken  without  day;  the  members  disperse  and  the 
work  of  the  commission  is  done. 

The  record  itself  is  a  document  of  five  half-sheets 
of  legal-cap  paper,  four  of  them  written  over  on  both 
sides  from  top  to  bottom  and  from  bottom  to  top 
alternately;  the  account  of  the  first  day's  proceedings 
ending  on  the  back  page  of  the  fourth,  leaving  a  por- 
tion of  the  page  blank.  The  account  of  the  second 
day's  proceedings  occupies  but  a  small  space  of  the 
first  page  of  the  last  half-sheet,  leaving  blank  a  full 
half  of  that  page  and  the  whole  of  the  back  thereof. 
The  document  is  complete  in  itself,  its  leaves  being 
fastened  together  by  a  narrow  yellow  silk  ribbon 
pushed  through  a  hole  in  the  top  in  the  fashion  of  law 
papers  which  are  read  by  turning  them  over  from  the 


134  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

bottom.*  According  to  Colonel  Burnett's  own  state- 
ment, when  he  reached  his  **  office  in  the  War  Depart- 
ment on  the  30th — possibly  on  the  morning  of  the 
1st  of  July"  he  "attached  the  petition  or  recommenda- 
tion of  mercy  to  the  findings  and  sentences  and  at  the 
end  of  them,"  and  "carried  .  .  .  and  delivered  them 
to  the  judge  advocate  general  in  person  or  to  the  clerk 
in  charge  of  the  court-martial  records."! 

There  they  remained  through  the  first  four  days  of 
July,  the  President  being  so  ill  as  to  "have  no  oppor- 
tunity of  conferring  with  any  members  of  his  cabi- 
net, "t  During  this  interval,  Washington,  Maryland, 
and  to  some  extent  the  whole  country  waited  in  painful 
suspense  to  hear  the  fate  of  Mrs.  Surratt — that  of  her 
companions  in  misery  being  almost  taken  for  granted. 
In  fact,  an  impression  prevailed  generally  that  the 
court  would  not,  and  could  not  if  it  would,  belie  the 
final  cause  of  its  organization ;  but  a  ray  of  hope  kept 
flickering  that  a  majority  of  the  distinguished  officers 
composing  the  tribunal  would  stop  short  of  hanging 
a  woman  of  the  character  and  standing  of  Mrs. 
Surratt  upon  the  same  scaffold  with  a  desperado  like 
Payne.  At  length,  on  Wednesday,  the  day  after  the 
Fourth,  Preston  King,  late  a  senator  in  Congress  from 
New  York  and  now  a  favored  guest  at  the  White 
House,  sauntered  into  the  judge  advocate's  office  and 
incidentally  let  fall  the  remark  that  the  President  was 

*See  copy  of  part  of  record  in  Appendix,  Note  II  of  this  chapter. 
t  See  paper  read  by  Col.  Burnett  before  Loyal  Legion,  N.  Y.,  April  3, 
1889:  printed  in  Appendix  to  Harris'  Hist,  of  Assassination. 
t  Holt's  Refutation  (1873),  pamphlet. 


FINDINGS    AND   EXECUTION  135 

able  to  leave  his  bed;  and  being  informed  that  Holt 
was  waiting  to  subniit  the  record  of  the  trial  for 
executive  approval,  a  messenger  from  the  White 
House,  later  in  the  day,  summoned  that  officer  to  an 
interview  with  his  titular  commander-in-chief.  The 
President,  not  being  expected  to  wade  through  the 
mass  of  testimony,  depended  for  his  knowledge  of  the 
merits  of  the  cause  almost  exclusively  on  the  Secre- 
tary of  War  and  his  immediate  subordinates  of  the 
Bureau.  Holt,  therefore,  did  not  burden  himself  with 
the  stenographer's  minutes  of  the  examination — direct 
and  cross,  by  question  and  answer — of  three  hundred 
witnesses ;  but,  in  lieu  thereof,  prepared  what  he  styled 
a  "formal  brief  review  of  the  case";  and,  with  this 
document  and  the  secret  record,  set  out  on  his  errand 
of  doom.  As  he  says,  he  found  the  President  **  alone,  *' 
very  pale,  as  if  just  recovered  from  a  severe  illness'*; 
and  ''without  delay"  he  ''proceeded  to  discharge  the 
duty  which  brought  me  (him)  into  his  presence,"* 
No  more  was  required  from  him  but  to  read,  or  submit 
to  the  President  for  him  to  read,  his  "brief  review" 
dated  that  day,  addressed  to  that  officer  and  signed  by 
himself.  This,  after  reciting  tlife  Charge  and  Specifi- 
cation, the  findings  and  sentences  (changed  in  their 
order,  however,  so  as  to  bring  Mrs.  Surratt's  next  to 
the  three  condemned  with  her  to  death),  concluded  as 
follows : 

"After  a  trial  continuing  for  fifty-three  days,  in  which 
between  three  or  four  hundred  witnesses  were  examined  for 

*  Refutation,  ut  sup. 


136  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABEAHAM  LINCOLN 

the  prosecution  and  defence  and  in  which  the  rights  of  the 
accused  were  watched  and  zealously  guarded  by  seven  able 
counsel  of  their  own  selection,  the  commission  have  arrived 
at  the  conclusions  presented  above."  (Bingham's  argument 
thereunto  annexed  is  here  referred  to.)  "The  opinion  is 
entertained  that  the  proceedings  were  regular,  and  that  the 
findings  of  the  commission  were  fully  justified  by  the  evidence. 
It  is  thought  that  the  highest  considerations  of  public  justice, 
as  well  as  the  future  security  of  the  lives  of  the  officers  of 
the  government,  demand  that  the  sentences  based  on  these 
findings  should  be  carried  into  execution";—* 

There  was  no  mention  or  hint  of  the  petition. 

Further  exhortation  was  uncalled  for.  "At  the 
time,"  to  quote  Holt  himself,  "Johnson  needed  no 
urging";  his  ruling  impulse  was  to  get  rid  of  a  dis- 
tasteful duty  in  the  shortest  possible  time.  The  ques- 
tion of  commuting  the  sentence  of  the  one  woman 
among  the  eight  condemned  must  have  arisen  even 
had  there  been  no  suggestion  emanating  from  the 
judges  of  the  court ;  and  the  President  was  notoriously 
of  the  opinion  that  sex  furnished  no  ground  for  his 
interference — a  doctrine  which  his  interlocutor  saw 
no  reason  to  combat.f  The  only  question  raised  being 
thus  settled,  the  day  of  execution  is  fixed  for  the 
succeeding  Friday,  and  then  the  judge  advocate  pro- 
ceeds to  draw  up  the  executive  order  in  due  form. 
Turning  the  sheets  over  until  he  reaches  the  last,  on 
the  upper  part  of  the  first  page  of  which  the  record 
terminates,  and  beginning  on  the  second  line  below  the 

*  See  Eeport  of  Jud.  Adv.  Gen.,  Nov.  13,  1865,  to  Sec.  of  War. 
t  See  Note  III  to  this  chapter  in  Appendix. 


FINDINGS   AND   EXECUTION  137 

signature  ' '  D.  Hunter, ' '  he  writes  out  what  was  called 
the  death  warrant,  approving  the  sentences  and  direct- 
ing them  to  be  carried  into  execution.  The  page  is 
filled  before  his  task  is  done,  when,  instead  of  turning 
the  page  up  and  continuing  to  write  on  the  back  from 
the  bottom  down — the  method  employed  as  to  all  the 
other  sheets — he  turns  the  entire  record  over  and  con- 
tinues writing  on  the  back  page  from  its  top,  proper, 
down;  a  change,  whether  unintentional  or  not,  likely 
to  have  the  effect  of  throwing  any  leaf  flying  at  the 
end  of  the  record  out  of  the  sight  of  the  signer  of  the 
paper.*  Completing  his  draft,  the  judge  advocate 
pushes  the  roll  over  to  the  President  who  signs  "An- 
drew Johnson"  with  a  tremulous  hand.  The  "con- 
fidential interview"  is  over,  and  Holt,  gathering  up 
the  sheets,  hurries  over  to  the  War  Office,  communi- 
cates the  result  of  the  consultation  to  Stanton,t  and, 
passing  down  stairs  to  the  room  of  the  adjutant  gen- 
eral, delivers  to  that  officer  so  much  of  the  record  as 
enables  him  to  promulgate  the  death  sentences  and  the 
death  warrant  on  the  morning  of  the  next  day. 

When  the  tidings  spread  through  the  capital  that 
Mrs.  Surratt  was  to  die  on  the  same  scaffold  with 
Herold,  Atzerodt  and  Payne  within  twenty-four  hours, 
her  relatives  and  friends  were  struck  dumb  with  dis- 
may ;  something  like  consternation  swept  over  the  bulk 
of  the  inhabitants  and  sombre  misgivings  troubled  the 
most  loyal  breasts.  A  rumor  that  five  of  the  officers 
had  joined  in  a  recommendation  of  mercy  in  which  the 

*  See  part  of  record  in  Appendix,  Note  II  of  this  chapter. 
t  Burnett 's  paper  in  Note  III  of  this  chapter. 


138  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

entire  commission  concurred  aroused  a  forlorn  hope 
that  the  President  might  even  yet  relent ;  and  a  stream 
of  suppliants  set  in  towards  the  Wliite  House — priests 
of  the  church  to  which  the  doomed  woman  belonged, 
and  high-placed  men  and  women  of  the  world ;  but  they 
were  repelled  by  Preston  King  and  James  Lane  (a 
senator  in  Congress  from  Kansas)  who  between  them 
divided  the  task  of  keeping  the  seclusion  of  the  execu- 
tive inviolate.  In  the  evening,  the  half-crazed  daugh- 
ter managed  to  reach  Judge  Holt  at  his  residence  and 
implored  him  to  beg  from  the  President  three  days 
more  of  life  for  her  mother,  which  the  judge  promised 
to  do.*  No  pause,  however,  was  made  in  the  prepara- 
tions for  the  fourfold  execution  of  the  morrow.  The 
scaffold,  with  its  long  platform  in  which  were  two 
drops  and  its  four  ropes  dangling  from  the  cross- 
beam, was  being  constructed  in  the  prison  yard;  and, 
at  five  in  the  morning,  the  four  condemned  prisoners 
were  removed  from  the  tier  of  cells  on  the  upper  floor 
which  they  had  hitherto  occupied,  to  separate  cells  on 
the  first  floor,  so  as  to  be  in  closer  proximity  to  the 
instrument  of  death.  As  a  last  desperate  resort, 
application  was  made  for  a  writ  of  habeas  corpus, 
which  was  granted  by  Judge  Wylie  of  the  Supreme 
Court  of  the  District  and  made  returnable  at  ten 
o'clock;  on  the  service  of  which,  General  Hancock,  who 
commanded  the  military  division,  hastened  to  report 
to  the  President.  To  him,  also,  came  Holt  with  the 
last  prayer  of  the  daughter  whom,  after  his  interview, 
he  meets  in  the  hall  with  the  announcement  that  there 

*  See  Holt  to  Gen.  Mussey  in  Befutation. 


FINDINGS    AND   EXECUTION  139 

is  no  hope.*  The  young  girl  cast  herself  down  at  the 
foot  of  the  stairs  leading  to  the  executive  office, 
appealing  to  the  guardians  of  the  door  in  the  name 
of  God  to  let  her  in;  conjuring  the  distracted  by- 
standers to  intercede  for  her;  pleading  that  her 
mother  was  too  good,  too  kind  to  be  guilty  of  the 
heinous  crime  laid  to  her  charge.  The  door  remained 
shut.  Inside,  the  President  was  being  stayed  with  an 
*  informal  discussion"  of  the  subject  of  commutation 
on  the  ground  of  sex,  with  which  two  or  three  of  his 
confidential  advisers  saw  fit  to  favor  him,  the  Minister 
of  War  delivering  himself  as  follows : 

' '  Surely  not,  Mr.  President,  for  if  the  death  penalty  should 
be  commuted  in  so  grave  a  case  as  the  assassination  of  the 
head  of  a  great  nation  on  account  of  the  sex  of  the  criminal, 
it  would  amount  to  an  invitation  to  assassins  hereafter  to 
employ  women  as  their  instruments,  under  the  belief  that  if 
arrested  and  condemned  they  would  be  punished  less  severely 
than  men.  An  act  of  executive  clemency  on  such  a  plea  would 
be  disapproved  of  by  the  government  of  every  civilized  nation 
on  earth,  "t 

At  the  hour  of  half-past  eleven,  Hancock,  accom- 
panied by  the  attorney  general  appeared  before  Judge 
Wylie  and,  by  order  of  the  President,  declined  to  obey 
the  writ  on  the  ground  that  it  was  suspended;  and, 
although  cavalrymen  were  still  kept  stationed  at  points 
along  the  line  from  the  White  House  to  the  arsenal  to 

*  See  article  by  Clampitt,  North  Amer.  Rev.,  September,  1880. 
t  See  Note  IV  to  this  chapter  in  Appendix. 


140  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

transmit  a  reprieve  at  the  last  moment,  all  hope  was 
finally  abandoned. 

In  the  meantime,  crowds  of  people  had  been  making 
their  way  by  land  and  water  to  catch  sight  of  the  exe- 
cution. The  wall  inclosing  the  arsenal  gromids  con- 
cealed the  scaffold  from  persons  outside,  and  those  not 
privileged  to  enter  sought  the  tops  of  buildings  in  the 
vicinity,  the  masts  of  vessels  in  the  river  and  other 
places  of  vantage  whence  to  view  the  awful  scene 
about  to  be  enacted.  The  corridors  of  the  prison  were 
filled  with  soldiers,  and  none  but  the  relatives,  the 
counsel  and  religious  advisers  of  the  condemned  were 
allowed  within  the  precincts,  of  the  prison.  On  the 
top  of  the  wall  was  stationed  the  Sixth  Regiment  of 
Veteran  Volunteers  and  in  the  yard  the  First  Regi- 
ment of  the  same  corps ;  for  the  execution  was  to  be  of 
an  exclusively  military  character — General  Hartranft 
being  in  command  and,  as  an  enthusiastic  reporter 
noted,  ''fine,  stalwart  specimens  of  Union  soldiers," 
the  executioners,  ''who  did  their  work  well."*  Be- 
tween the  hours  of  one  and  two,  the  death  march 
began ;  first,  the  woman  already  half  dead  and  in  her 
shroud,  two  soldiers  holding  her  erect;  next,  Payne, 
his  lips  fresh  from  a  declaration  of  the  absolute  inno- 
cence of  the  woman  before  him;  unconcerned  for  his 
own  fate ;  unobservant  of  his  surroundings ;  impatient 
for  the  end.  Herold  and  Atzerodt  follow.  The  four 
are  ranged  on  the  high  scaffold,  two  on  one  drop,  two 
on  the  other.  Four  graves  yawn  open  close  by.  The 
death  warrant  is  read,  the  nooses  adjusted,  the  hoods 

*  Baker 's  Eist.  Secret  Service,  508,  513-523. 


FINDINGS   AND   EXECUTION  141 

drawn  down.  Hartranft  waves  his  sword,  the  two 
drops  fall  and  the  four  figures  shoot  down  and  then 
sway  to  and  fro  between  heaven  and  earth.  The 
bodies  are  cut  down ;  a  hurried  post-mortem  examina- 
tion is  made;  and,  then,  inclosed  in  gun  boxes  for 
coffins,  they  are  buried  in  a  row.  The  soldiery  depart 
to  the  wail  of  trumpet  and  beat  of  drum.  Silence 
descends  on  the  old  arsenal,  broken  only  by  the  tramp 
of  the  sentinel  set  to  guard  the  unhallowed  dead.* 

*  Mr.  Clampitt,  in  bis  article  in  the  North  American  'Review  for  Sep- 
tember, 1880,  quotes  from  a  letter  of  Gen.  Hartranft  sent  to  the  Presi- 
dent on  the  morning  of  the  execution: 

"The  prisoner  Payne  has  just  told  me  that  Mrs.  Surratt  is  entirely- 
innocent  of  the  assassination  of  President  Lincoln,  or  of  any  knowledge 
thereof.  He  also  states  that  she  had  no  knowledge  whatever  of  the 
abduction  plot,  that  nothing  was  ever  said  to  her  about  it,  and  that  her 
name  was  never  mentioned  by  the  parties  connected  therewith." 

At  the  close  of  the  letter  General  H.  wrote  ...  "I  believe  that 
Payne  told  the  truth  in  this  matter." 


CHAPTER    VI 

The  Question  of  Jukisdiction 

The  "Instructions  to  the  Armies  of  the  United 
States  in  the  Field,"  of  April,  1863,  state  that  military 
jurisdiction  is  of  two  kinds :  first,  that  which  is  defined 
by  act  of  Congress,  and,  second,  that  which  is  derived 
from  ''the  common  law  of  war."*  General  Ewing,  at 
the  close  of  the  testimony  on  the  trial  just  reviewed, 
complaining  of  the  multiplicity  of  offences  included  in 
the  Charge,  and  the  judge  advocate  maintaining  there 
was  but  ''one  transaction" — "a  traitorous  con- 
spiracy"— and  various  acts  "traitorously"  committed 
in  pursuance  thereof,  the  former  inquired  by  what 
statute  the  offence  was  defined  and  its  punishment 
fixed;  and  his  adversary  made  the  following  reply: 

* '  I  think  the  common  law  of  war  will  reach  that  case.  This 
is  a  crime  .  .  .  committed  in  the  midst  of  a  great  civil  war, 
in  the  capital  of  the  country,  in  the  camp  of  the  Commander- 
in-Chief  of  our  armies,  and  if  the  common  law  of  war  cannot 
be  enforced  against  criminals  of  that  character,  then  I  think 
such  a  code  is  in  vain  in  this  world. 

"Mr.  Ewing:  Do  you  base  it,  then,  only  on  the  law  of 
nations  ? 

' '  The  Judge  Advocate  :  The  common  law  of  war. '  'f 

*  Appendix  to  Pitman. 
tPitma-n,  247. 

(142) 


QUESTION    OF   JUEISDICTION  143 

And  it  "^as  upon  ''the  common  law  of  war"  that  the 
government  was  obliged  in  the  end  to  rest  the  juris- 
diction of  the  tribunal  it  had  called  into  existence. 
This  fundamental  question  was  lost  sight  of  amid  the 
universal  outcry  for  the  punishment  of  those  clearly 
guilty  of  taking  part  in  the  crime  against  the  nation; 
but  the  presence  of  a  female  citizen  of  the  United  States 
on  trial  before  a  board  of  army  officers,  provoked,  even 
in  this  period  of  vengeful  feeling,  the  unfavorable  criti- 
cism of  the  press,  the  courts  and  the  legal  profession.* 
By  its  own  members,  the  jurisdiction  of  the  commission 
was  regarded  as  a  matter  of  course.  Indeed,  as  they 
were  told  by  the  special  judge  advocate,  "they  could 
question  the  authority  constituting  them  no  more  than 
they  could  question  their  own  existence."  They  were 
constrained,  nevertheless,  to  tolerate  two  powerful  at- 
tacks upon  their  right  to  try  the  defendants,  which 
must  have  ruffled  their  professional  equanimity. 

The  argument  of  Eeverdy  Johnson  was  a  model  of 
closely-reasoned,  con\4ncing  speech.  He  contended 
that  military  tribunals  could  try  none  but  military 
offences,  and  those  only  when  the  persons  committing 
them  belonged  to  the  army  or  the  navy ;  that  civilians 
cannot  be  subjected  to  military  law  in  time  of  war  any 
more  than  in  time  of  peace ;  that,  even  if  the  power  to 
institute  such  a  commission  as  the  present  was  an  inci- 
dent of  the  war  power,  that  power  is  lodged  not  in  the 
executive  but  exclusively  in  the  Congress,  and  the  Con- 
gress, neither  by  the  articles  of  war  nor  by  the  two 
acts  in  pari  materia  passed  during  the  rebellion,  had 

*  See  Note  I  to  chapter  in  Appendix. 


144  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

authorized  any  such  tribunals;  on  the  contrary,  "until 
the  rebellion  a  military  commission  like  the  present, 
organized  in  a  loyal  State  or  Territory  where  the 
courts  are  open  and  their  proceedings  unobstructed 
...  is  not  to  be  found  sanctioned  or  the  most  remotely 
recognized,  or  even  alluded  to,  by  any  writer  on  mili- 
tary law  in  England  or  in  the  United  States,  or  in  any 
legislation  of  either  country."  The  counsel  further 
maintained  that  ''traitorous  conspiracy"  is  nothing 
less  than  treason,  and  treason,  under  an  express  pro- 
vision of  the  Constitution,  must  be  tried  by  the  civil 
courts. "  * '  We  learn  that  the  very  chief  of  the  alleged 
conspiracy  has  been  indicted  and  is  about  to  be  tried 
before  one  of  these  courts."  If  he  ...  is  to  be  and 
can  be  so  tried,  upon  what  ground  of  right,  of  fairness 
or  of  policy,  can  parties  who  are  charged  to  have  been 
Ms  mere  instruments  be  deprived  of  the  same  mode 
of  triaH"  In  conclusion,  the  counsel  claimed  that 
the  District  of  Columbia  had  not  been  occupied  as 
enemy's  territory;  that  martial  law  had  never  been 
declared  in  the  loyal  states  by  any  competent  au- 
thority; that  the  suspension  of  the  writ  of  habeas 
corpus  carried  with  it  no  other  rights  than  the 
right  to  inquire  into  the  cause  of  arrest ;  and,  in  illus- 
tration of  the  general  scope  of  his  argument,  cited  the 
trials  in  the  civil  courts  of  England,  in  the  time  of  war 
and  domestic  violence — the  writ  of  habeas  corpus 
being  suspended — of  persons  who  attempted  to  assas- 
sinate the  king,  of  the  assassin  of  Percival,  the  prime 
minister,  and  of  Hardy  and  Home  Tooke — ''no  one 
suggesting  any  other  mode." 


QUESTION   OF   JURISDICTION  145 

Ewing's  attack,  coming  from  a  comrade  of  the 
officers  composing  the  commission,  was  outspoken  to 
the  point  of  audacity.  He  put  it  in  syllogistic  form. 
*' Under  the  Constitution  none  but  courts  ordained  and 
established  by  Congress  can  exercise  judicial  power, 
and  these  courts  must  be  composed  of  judges  who  hold 
their  offices  during  good  behavior.  Congress  has  not 
'ordained  or  established'  you  a  court  and  you  are  not 
judges  who  hold  your  offices  during  good  behavior. 
You  are,  therefore,  no  court  under  the  Constitution, 
and  you  have  no  jurisdiction  in  these  cases,  unless  you 
obtain  it  from  some  source  which  overrules  this  con- 
stitutional provision. 

"The  President  cannot  confer  judicial  power  upon  you, 
for  he  has  it  not.  His  mandate  .  .  .  were  no  better  than  the 
simple  mandate  to  take  A.  B.,  C.  D.,  E.  F.,  or  6.  H.  and  put 
them  to  death. 

''The  President  .  .  .  may  constitute  courts  pursuant  to 
the  Articles  of  War,  but  he  can  give  them  jurisdiction  over 
citizens,"  only  'in  cases  arising  in  the  land  or  naval  forces,* 
to  which  ''these  defendants  did  not  and  do  not  belong. 

"Congress  has  not  attempted  to  grant  you  the  power; 
Congress  could  not  grant  it.  .  .  .  Congress  has  authorized 
the  suspension  of  the  writ  of  habeas  corpus"  .  .  .,  but  "this 
goes  to  imprisonment  not  trial,  conviction  or  punishment. ' ' 

The  gallant  general  even  sought  out  the  judge  advo- 
cate in  his  last  refuge — silent  leges  inter  arma — and 
expounded  his  ** common  law  of  war"  after  the  follow- 
ing fashion : 

10 


146  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

"Cases  have  often  arisen,  in  which  robber-bands,  whose 
vocation  is  piracy  on  the  high  seas,  or  promiscuous  robbery 
and  murder  on  land  .  .  .  may  be  lawfully  put  to  the  sword 
without  quarter,  in  battle,  or  hung  on  the  yard-arm  or  other- 
wise put  to  death,  .  .  .  without  trial.  ...  A  military  court 
may  be  called,  but  it  is  advisory  merely;  the  general  acts, 
condemns  and  executes.  .  .  .  Over  these  classes  his  power  is 
restrained  only  by  the  usages  of  war  among  civilized  nations. 
But  these  defendants  are  not  charged  as  spies,  pirates,  or 
armed  and  organized  marauders  or  enemies  captured  in  war 
.  .  .  They  belong  to  none  of  these  classes  over  whom 
military  discretion  or  martial  law  extends,  unless  they  extend 
over  and  embrace  all  the  people  of  the  United  States. ' ' 

The  counsel  closed  with  a  warning  which  now  will 
he  regarded  as  prophetic: 

"Our  judicial  tribunals  at  some  future  day  .  .  .  will  be 
again  in  the  full  exercise  of  their  constitutional  powers  and 
may  think,  as  a  large  proportion  of  the  legal  profession  think 
now,  that  your  jurisdiction  in  these  cases  is  an  unwarranted 
assumption."  And,  in  that  event,  "your  sentence  will  be 
held  in  law  no  better  than  the  rulings  of  Judge  Lynch 's  courts 
in  the  administration  of  lynch  law. '  '* 

The  special  assistant  in  his  reply  was  as  dogmatic 
in  the  affirmance  of  the  jurisdiction  of  the  tribunal  of 
which  he  was  a  member  as  he  had  been  in  the  affirm- 
ance of  the  guilt  of  every  one  of  the  accused.  He,  in 
fact,  viewed  the  attacks  of  counsel  as  an  aspersion 
upon  the  President  for  attempting  'Ho  prevent  the 
consummation  of  the  traitorous  conspiracy."  His 
characterization  of  the  argument  of  Reverdy  Johnson 

*  Pitman,  264. 


QUESTION   OF   JURISDICTION  147 

as  a  "plea  on  behalf  of  an  expiring  and  shattered 
rebellion"  has  already  been  noticed;  but  discourtesy 
of  this  character  the  brilliant  career  of  the  junior 
counsel  forbade,  and  Bingham  did  but  gently  remind 
Ewing  that  in  the  enforcement  of  martial  law  in  the 
West,  where  he  had  been  recently  in  command,  he 
might  have  subjected  himself  to  ''the  same  stern  judg- 
ment he  now  invokes  on  others."  To  the  assertion  of 
the  counsel  that  the  civil  courts  are  open,  he  made 
answer:  "They  are  closed  throughout  half  of  the 
republic,  and  were  only  open  in  this  District  on  the 
day  of  .  .  .  the  traitorous  assassination  of  your  Presi- 
dent, and  are  only  open  at  this  hour  by  force  of  the 
bayonet."  Booth,  he  said,  "was  pursued  by  the  mili- 
tary power  of  the  government,  captured  and  slain. 
"Was  this  an  act  of  usurpation?  If  not,  I  would  be 
glad  to  know  by  what  law  the  President  is  condemned 
for  arresting  in  like  manner  and  .  .  .  subjecting  to 
trial  .  .  .  any  and  all  the  other  parties  to  the  same 
damnable  conspiracy  ...  by  a  military  tribunal." 
To  Swing's  audacious  arraignment  of  the  officers  sit- 
ting around  the  table  as  "no  court  under  the  Consti- 
tution," he  replied:  "The  power  of  this  government  to 
try  and  punish  military  offences  by  military  tribunals 
is  no  part  of  the  'judicial  power  of  the  United 
States'  ";  it  is  implied  in  the  grants  of  power  to  make 
war,  to  make  rules  for  the  government  of  the  land  and 
naval  forces,  and  is  necessary  to  carry  the  enumerated 
powers  into  effect.  In  fact,  the  special  assistant  did 
not  share  the  fondness  of  his  chief  for  "the  common 
law  of  war."    On  the  contrary,  he  rested  his  case 


148  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABEAHAM  LINCOLN 

mainly  on  tlie  President's  order  of  September  24tli, 
1862,  suspending  the  writ  of  habeas  corpus  and  declar- 
ing ''all  rebels,  their  aiders  and  abettors,  within  the 
United  States,  and  all  persons  discouraging  enlist- 
ments, resisting  drafts  or  guilty  of  any  disloyal  prac- 
tice .  .  .  subject  to  martial  law  and  liable  to  trial 
and  punishment  by  court-martial  and  military  com- 
mission"; construing  the  order  as  a  proclamation  of 
martial  law  over  the  entire  Union,  whether  the  par- 
ticular state  or  district  were  the  theatre  of  war  or 
not,  and  upholding  the  authority  of  the  executive  of  its 
own  motion  to  do  such  an  act ;  in  effect  enthroning  the 
military  commanders  of  the  departments  in  the  loyal 
states  as  absolute  masters  of  the  life  and  property  of 
the  citizen.  "To  my  mind,  nothing  can  be  clearer  than 
that  citizen  and  soldier  alike,  in  time  of  civil  or  foreign 
war,  after  a  proclamation  of  martial  law,  are  triable 
by  military  tribunals  for  all  offences  in  the  interest  of 
or  in  concert  with  the  enemy."  Again:  "Who  will 
dare  say  that  in  time  of  civil  war,  no  person  can  be 
deprived  of  life,  liberty  or  property  without  due 
process  of  law!  This  is  a  provision  of  your  Constitu- 
tion, than  which  there  is  none  more  just  and  sacred  in 
it.  It  is,  however,  only  a  law  of  peace  and  not  of  war. 
In  war,  it  must  be  and  is  to  a  great  extent  inoperative 
and  disregarded."  And  the  counsel  adds:  "That  the 
proclamation  covers  the  offence  charged  here,  no  man 
will  or  dare  to  deny.  "Was  it  not  a  disloyal  practice? 
"Was  it  not  aiding  and  abetting  the  insurgents  to  enter 
into  conspiracy  with  them  to  kill  and  murder  within 
your  capital  and  your  intrenched  camp  your  Com- 


QUESTION   OF   JURISDICTION  149 

mander-in-Chief,  your  Lieiitenant-General,  your  Vice 
President  and  your  Secretary  of  War?" 

Nevertheless,  confident  of  the  validity  of  such  a 
proclamation  as  he  would  have  the  court  believe  he 
was,  this  leading  member  of  the  House  of  Representa- 
tives did  not  venture  to  rely  for  the  exercise  of  so 
sweeping  a  power  upon  the  executive  alone ;  but,  call- 
ing to  its  aid  the  department  to  which  he  himself 
belonged,  cited  the  act  of  Congress  of  March  3rd,  1863, 
which  authorized  the  President  to  suspend  the  writ  of 
habeas  corpus  and  made  his  orders  a  defence  in  all 
suits  brought  in  consequence  of  acts  done  in  pursuance 
thereof,  as  having  ratified  and  confirmed  the  procla- 
mation, though  no  express  mention  was  made  of  it  in 
the  act.  Moreover,  near  the  close  of  his  argument,  he 
accepts  the  challenge  of  his  learned  adversary  to  pro- 
duce a  single  statute  authorizing  or  regulating  military 
commissions  in  cases  similar  to  the  one  at  bar,  by 
producing  two;  one,  a  section  of  the  act  of  March, 
1863,  providing  that  ''all  persons  who,  in  time  of  war 
or  rebellion  against  the  United  States,  shall  be  found 
lurking  as  spies  in  or  about  the  camps,  etc.,  of  the 
army  or  elsewhere  shall  be  triable  by  military  com- 
mission and  shall,  upon  conviction,  suffer  death";  the 
other,  the  act  of  July  2nd,  1864,  that  provides :  ' '  The 
commanding  general  in  the  field  or  the  commander  of 
the  department,  as  the  case  may  be,  shall  have  power 
to  carry  into  execution  all  sentences  against  guerrilla 
marauders  for  robbery,  arson,  burglary,  etc.,  and  for 
violations  of  the  laws  and  customs  of  war,  as  well  as 


150  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

sentences    against    spies,    mutineers,    deserters    and 
murderers. ' ' 

From  the  counsel's  premises,  the  conclusion  is  in- 
evitable that,  if  the  prisoners  at  the  bar  properly 
belonged  in  the  category  of  offenders  mentioned  in 
these  statutes,  the  military  commander  of  the  District, 
according  to  the  "Instructions"  to  the  army  cited 
above,  might  have  dispensed  with  a  commission  and 
summarily  strung  up  in  the  arsenal  yard  the  whole 
eight  as  "enemies  of  the  human  race." 

The  commission,  after  hearing  these  weighty  argu- 
ments on  the  question  of  its  jurisdiction,  did  not  deem 
it  worth  while  even  to  take  a  vote  in  reconsideration 
of  its  formal  action  overruling  the  plea  interposed  on 
the  arraignment;  but  the  attorney  general,  thinking 
something  more  should  be  done  to  satisfy  public 
opinion,  reduced  to  writing  the  verbal  opinion  he 
appears  to  have  rendered  to  the  President  before  the 
commission  was  organized.  This  official  deliverance 
is  in  some  respects  unique.  In  the  first  place,  no  men- 
tion is  made  of  the  proclamation  of  martial  law  the 
special  assistant  principally  relied  on,  but  the  law 
officer  of  the  government  bases  his  opinion  upon  the 
ground  so  much  favored  by  the  judge  advocate  gen- 
eral, viz.:  "the  common  law  of  war."  He  first  sum- 
marizes the  facts :  the  President  was  assassinated  at  a 
theatre  in  Washington;  civil  war  being  flagrant,  the 
city  defended  by  fortifications,  the  principal  police 
being  federal  soldiers  and  the  President's  house  and 
person  under  the  guard,  or  should  have  been,  of  sol- 
diers; martial  law  declared  in  the  District;  but  the 


QUESTION   OF   JUEISDICTION  151 

civil  courts  open,  holding  regular  sessions  and  transact- 
ing business  as  in  times  of  peace.  On  this  state  of  facts, 
he  gives  his  reasons  why  the  conspirators  in  ques- 
tion ought  to  be  tried  by  a  military  tribunal.  First: 
Civil  courts  are  created  by  a  law  of  Congress,  military 
tribunals  exist  in  time  of  war,  Congress  having  the 
power  to  prescribe  how  they  may  be  constituted;  but, 
if  Congress  do  not,  they  nevertheless  are  constituted 
under  the  laws  and  usages  of  civilized  warfare.  It  is 
too  plain  for  argument,  in  the  view  of  the  attorney 
general,  that  Congress  cannot,  either  in  war  or  in 
peace,  create  military  tribunals  to  try  persons  not  in 
the  land  or  naval  forces;  but  it  does  not  follow  that 
they  cannot  be  created  at  all.  Second:  The  law  of 
nations  is  a  part  of  the  law  of  the  land ;  and  the  laws 
of  war  constitute  much  the  greater  part  of  the  law  of 
nations.  By  that  law  all  the  people  of  the  respective 
belligerents,  in  war,  are  enemies  to  each  other — open 
and  active  enemies  or  secret  active  participants,  such 
as  spies,  brigands,  jayhawkers,  rebels  and  assassins. 
As  to  the  former  class,  there  is  no  question,  the  com- 
mander of  an  army  having  the  same  power  to  organize 
military  tribunals  when  occasions  arise  as  to  set  his 
squadrons  in  the  field.  As  to  the  latter,  the  question 
is  whether  the  laws  and  usages  of  war  authorize  such 
tribunals  to  determine  their  fate;  and,  in  the  affirma- 
tive, the  attorney  general  cites  Wheaton  as  holding 
that  irregular  bands  of  marauders  are  liable  to  be 
treated  as  lawless  banditti,  and,  also,  Patrick  Henry's 
speech  in  the  Virginia  Convention  to  ratify  the  Con- 
stitution of  the  United  States,  declaring  that  a  pirate, 


152  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

an  outlaw,  or  a  common  enemy  of  mankind  may  be  put 
to  death  at  any  time — ''hunted  down  like  wolves.'* 
In  response  to  those  who  say  that  when  they  conflict 
with  the  Constitution  the  laws  of  war  must  give  way, 
this  expounder  of  "the  common  law  in  war"  advances 
a  distinction  which  has  the  merit  at  least  of  being 
altogether  new: 

"The  guarantees  of  the  Constitution  refer  to  crimes.  In- 
fractions of  the  law  of  nations  are  offenses,  many  of  which 
are  not  crimes  at  all,  such  as  running  blockades,  holding 
intercourse  with  the  enemy,  acting  as  a  spy,  joining  banditti, 
jayhawking  guerillas,  etc.  Offenses  against  the  laws  of  war, 
whether  crimes  or  not,  must  be  punished  under  the  laws  of 
war.  Crimes  must  be  dealt  with  under  the  provisions  of  the 
Constitution. 

"The  law  of  nations  .  .  .  has  decided  that  jayhawkers, 
banditti,  etc.,  are  offenders  against  the  laws  of  nature  and  of 
war,  and  as  such  amenable  to  the  military. 

"Booth  and  his  associates  were  secret  active  public  enemies. 
His  exclamation  'sic  semper  tyrannis'  on  the  stage  .  .  .  and 
his  dying  message,  'Mother,  I  died  for  my  country,'  shows  he 
was  not  an  assassin  from  private  malice  but  that  he  acted  as 
a  public  foe. ' ' 

The  attorney  general's  conclusion,  therefore,  is: 

"If  the  persons  who  are  charged  with  the  assassination  of 
the  President  committed  the  deed  as  public  enemies,  as  I 
believe  they  did,  and  whether  they  did  or  not  is  a  question  to 
be  decided  by  the  tribunal  before  which  they  were  tried,  they 
not  only  can,  but  ought  to  be  tried  before  a  military  tribunal. 
If  the  persons  charged  have  offended  against  the  laws  of 


QUESTION   OF   JUEISDICTION  153 

war,  it  would  be  as  palpably  wrong  for  the  military  to. hand 
them  over  to  the  civil  courts,  as  it  would  be  wrong  in  a  civil 
court  to  convict  a  man  for  murder  who  had  in  time  of  war 
killed  another  in  battle."* 

In  the  meantime,  the  question,  which  the  commission 
treated  as  a  technicality  of  constitutional  law  it  was 
bound  by  the  very  law  of  its  existence  to  ignore,  was 
passing  up  for  final  adjudication  to  the  highest  trib- 
unal in  the  land.  In  the  fall  of  1864,  in  the  state  of 
Indiana,  by  order  of  the  commanding  general  of  the 
district,  certain  members  of  an  organization  called  the 
''Sons  of  Liberty"  were  arrested  and  put  in  jail. 
This  secret  society  the  judge  advocate  general  de- 
nounced in  his  official  report  as  ''the  echo  and  faithful 
ally"  of  the  rebellion,  and  the  guilty  men  engaged  in 
it  as  having  "trodden  under  foot  every  sentiment  of 
honor  and  every  restraint  of  law,  human  and  divine.'* 
"  Judea,"  he  stated,  "produced  but  one  Judas  Iscariot 
and  Eome  .  .  .  but  one  Catiline;  and  yet  .  .  .  there 
has  arisen  in  our  land  an  entire  brood  of  such  traitors 
all  animated  by  the  same  parricidal  spirit  and  all 
struggling  with  the  same  relentless  malignity  for  the 
dismemberment  of  our  Union. ' '  Three  of  these  Judas- 
Catilines  were  brought  to  trial  at  Indianapolis  before 
a  military  commission  appointed  by  the  commanding 
general,  on  charges,  preferred  by  Colonel  Burnett,  of 
conspiracy  against  the  government,  affording  aid  and 
comfort  to  rebels,  inciting  insurrection,  disloyal  prac- 
tices and  violations  of  the  laws  of  war;  and,  on  the 

*  Atty.-Gen.  's  Opinion  in  Pitman 's  Appendix. 


154  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

eighteenth  of  December,  found  guilty  and  sentenced 
to  be  hung.  The  findings  and  sentences,  approved  by 
the  commander,  were  sent  to  the  President  and  by  him 
referred  to  the  judge  advocate,  who  recommended  that 
the  sentences  be  carried  into  effect.  Lincoln,  at  the 
time  of  his  death,  still  had  the  proceedings  under 
advisement;  but  his  successor  ordered  the  condemned 
to  be  executed  on  the  nineteenth  of  May,  1865.  On  the 
tenth  of  that  month,  just  as  the  trial  of  the  assassins 
was  about  to  commence,  Milligan — one  of  the  three — 
filed  in  the  circuit  court  of  the  United  States,  in  pur- 
suance of  the  act  of  March,  1863,  a  petition  for  his  dis- 
charge, setting  forth  that  he  had  never  belonged  to  the 
land  or  naval  forces  or  to  the  militia  while  in  actual 
service;  and  the  two  judges,  differing  in  opinion,  cer- 
tified the  questions  involved  to  the  Supreme  Court. 
Thereupon,  President  Johnson,  after  commuting  the 
sentence  of  one  of  the  others  to  imprisonment  for  life, 
directed  the  suspension  of  the  other  sentences  until 
the  second  day  of  June;  and,  at  the  last  moment,  in 
deference  to  the  expostulations  of  Justice  David  Davis 
and  Governor  Morton,  sent  by  telegraph  a  like  com- 
mutation in  the  case  of  Milligan  and  his  fellow- 
prisoner.* 

The  main  question — had  the  military  commission 
jurisdiction  to  try  Milligan  f — came  on  for  argument 
at  Washington  in  the  January  term  of  1866 ;  Benjamin 
F.  Butler  being  associated  with  the  attorney  general, 
and  a  distinguished  array  of  counsel  appearing  for  the 

*H€adley's  Confederate  Operations  in  Canada  (Neale  Pub.  Co.),  p. 
452-4;  Khodes,  V,  328. 


QUESTION   OF   JURISDICTION  155 

petitioner.  Speed  repeated  in  somewhat  diluted  form 
the  disquisition  on  the  law  of  war  he  submitted  to  the 
President  in  the  case  of  the  assassins,  reinforced  on 
this  occasion  by  Bingham's  argument  in  support  of  the 
proclamation  of  September,  1862,  and  its  ratification 
by  Congress;  claiming  that  Milligan's  offences  came 
under  one  of  the  classes  mentioned  in  that  paper.  That 
Milligan  never  belonged  to  the  land  or  naval  forces, 
according  to  the  attorney  general,  was  of  no  con- 
sequence. ''Neither  residence  nor  propinquity  to  the 
field  of  actual  hostilities  is  the  test  to  determine  who 
is  or  who  is  not  subject  to  martial  law."  The  crimes 
charged  were  committed  within  the  military  lines  of 
the  army  and  upon  the  theatre  of  military  operations, 
in  a  state  which  had  been  and  was  then  threatened  with 
invasion.  The  guarantees  of  the  Constitution  are  no 
"restraint  on  the  war-making  power."  "These,  in 
truth,  are  all  peace  provisions,  and,  like  all  other  con- 
ventional and  legislative  laws  and  enactments,  are 
silent  amidst  arms." 

David  Dudley  Field,  who  was  first  heard  on  behalf 
of  the  petitioner,  defined  a  military  commission  as 
"originally  an  advisory  board  of  officers  convened  for 
the  purpose  of  informing  the  conscience  of  the  com- 
manding officer  in  cases  where  he  might  act  for  himself 
if  he  chose."  The  commission  in  the  present  case 
depends  entirely  on  the  executive  will,  he  said,  putting 
the  question:  "Has  the  President  in  time  of  war,  upon 
his  own  will  and  judgment,  the  power  to  bring  before 
his  military  officers,  any  person  in  the  land  and  subject 
him  to  trial  and  punishment  even  to  death T'    Whence 


156  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

is  this  ^' awful  power"  derived!  Not  from  the  "exe- 
cutive power"  granted  by  the  Constitution.  Not  from 
the  clause  making  the  President  commander-in-chief. 
To  command  an  army  requires  the  control  of  no  other 
persons  than  the  officers,  soldiers  and  camp  followers. 
Congress  is  empowered  to  do  all  the  rest  necessary. 
Military  tribunals  for  the  trial  of  non-military  persons 
"are  inconsistent  with  the  liberty  of  the  citizen,  and 
can  have  no  place  in  constitutional  government." 
Strictly  speaking,  the  counsel  points  out,  "there  is  no 
such  thing  as  martial  law ;  it  is  martial  rule ;  the  will 
of  the  commanding  officer,  and  nothing  more,  nothing 
less." 

James  A.  Garfield,  then  a  representative  in  Congress 
from  the  state  of  Oliio,  was  heard  next.  ' '  To  maintain 
the  legality  of  the  sentence,"  said  the  man  to  be  the 
next  President  of  the  United  States  to  fall  by  the  hand 
of  an  assassin,  "opposite  counsel  were  compelled  not 
only  to  ignore  the  Constitution  but  to  declare  it  sus- 
pended— that  from  the  fifth  day  of  October,  1864,  to  the 
ninth  day  of  May,  1865,  martial  law  alone  existed  in 
Indiana";  the  commanding  general  having  power  "to 
lay  his  hand  on  every  citizen,  try  him,  sentence  him 
and  put  him  to  death. ' '  To  show  what  the  representa- 
tives of  the  people  thought  on  the  subject,  he  quoted 
from  an  appropriation  bill,  passed  by  the  House  near 
the  close  of  the  thirty-eighth  Congress  (1863-5),  a  sec- 
tion providing  that  "no  person  shall  be  tried  by  court- 
martial  or  military  commission  in  any  state  or  territory 
where  the  courts  are  open,  except  persons  in  the  mili- 
tary and  naval  service  ...  or  rebel  enemies  charged 


QUESTION    OF   JURISDICTION  157 

with  being  spies"; — a  section,  as  the  counsel  noted, 
inserted  because  of  ''alarm  at  the  growing  tendency 
to  break  down  the  barriers  of  the  law,"  and  the  strik- 
ing out  of  which  by  the  Senate  resulted  in  the  failure 
of  the  entire  measure.* 

But  it  was  the  argument  of  Jeremiah  S.  Black  that 
rendered  the  discussion  a  contribution  to  the  litera- 
ture of  the  country.  It  consisted  of  a  series  of  weighty 
propositions  clothed  in  that  racy  diction  in  the  use  of 
which  he  was  without  a  rival.  "We  submit,"  thus  the 
counsel  began,  "that  a  person  not  in  the  military  or 
naval  service  cannot  be  punished  at  all  until  he  has  a 
fair,  open  and  public  trial  before  an  impartial  jury 
.  .  .  ;  a  proposition  which  ought  to  be  received  as  true 
without  any  argument  to  support  it;  because  if  it  be 
not  a  part  of  our  law,  then  this  is  not  a  free  country." 
So  far  from  the  guarantees  of  the  Constitution  being 
in  force  only  in  time  of  peace,  it  was  in  time  of  war, 
the  counsel  contended,  that  they  were  most  needed. 
"Our  wise  forefathers  knew  that  tranquility  was  not 
to  be  always  anticipated  in  a  republic ;  the  spirit  of  a 
free  people  is  often  turbulent;  civil  war  might  come," 
and  "prosecutions  for  political  offences"  instituted 
"on  charges  founded  upon  the  information  of  spies 
and  detectives  who  make  merchandise  of  their  oaths 
and  trade  in  the  blood  of  their  fellowmen";  and  it 
was  for  this  very  reason  that  they  made  trial  by  jury 
"perpetual   and  universal."     "The  truth  is  that  no 

*  The  counsel  further  stated  that  almost  every  senator  acknowledged 
the  "justice"  of  the  section  but  "feared  it  might  cripple  the  exe- 
cutive. ' ' 


158  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

authority  exists  anjn^^here  in  the  world  for  the  doc- 
trine of  the  attorney  general.  No  judge  or  jurist,  no 
statesman  or  parliamentary  orator,  on  this  or  the  other 
side  of  the  water,  sustains  him.  Every  elementary 
writer  is  against  him.  ...  No  book  can  be  found  in 
any  library  to  justify  the  assertion  that  military  trib- 
unals can  try  a  citizen  at  a  place  where  the  courts  are 
open." 

The  counsel  closed  by  delineating  with  a  few  master 
strokes  what  a  military  commission  particularly  is : 

"No  human  being  in  this  country  can  exercise  any  kind 
of  public  authority  which  is  not  conferred  by  law ;  and  under 
the  United  States,  it  must  be  given  by  the  express  words  of 
a  written  statute.  .  .  ,  Courts-martial  .  .  .  are  authorized; 
they  are  legal  institutions;  their  jurisdiction  is  limited,  and 
their  whole  code  of  procedure  is  regulated  by  act  of  Congress. 
Upon  the  civil  courts,  all  the  jurisdiction  they  have  or  can 
have  is  bestowed  by  law.  But  a  military  commission  is  not 
a  court-martial,  and  it  is  not  a  civil  court.  ...  It  has  no  law 
of  its  own.  Its  terrible  authority  is  undefined,  and  its  exer- 
cise without  any  legal  control.  It  has  no  legal  origin  and  no 
legal  name  among  the  children  of  men";  and  it  exercises 
"all  power  for  the  paradoxical  reason  that  none  belongs  to 
it  rightfully." 

"The  power  exercised  through  these  military  commissions 
is  not  only  unregulated  by  law,  but  it  is  incapable  J  being  so 
regulated.  It  asserts  the  right  of  the  executive  government 
without  the  interposition  of  the  judiciary,  to  capture,  imprison 
and  kill  any  person  to  whom  that  government  or  its  paid 
defendants  may  choose  to  impute  an  offence.  ...  It  operates 
in  different  ways;  the  instruments  which  it  uses  are  not 
always  the  same;  it  hides  its  hideous  features  under  many 


QUESTION    OF   JURISDICTION  159 

disguises;  it  assumes  every  variety  of  form.  But,  in  all  its 
mutations  of  outward  appearance,  it  is  still  identical  in 
principle,  object  and  origin." 

"But,  while  powerless  to  do  good,"  military  commissions 
**may  become  omnipotent  to  do  harm.  They  w^ould  be  organ- 
ized to  convict,  and  the  conviction  would  follow  the  accusation 
as  surely  as  night  follows  day.  A  government,  of  course, 
will  accuse  none  before  such  a  commission  except  those  whom 
it  predetermines  to  destroy.  The  accuser  can  choose  the 
judges,  and  will  select  those  who  are  known  to  be  .  .  .  the 
most  ready  to  do  whatever  may  please  the  power  which  gives 
them  pay  and  promotion.  The  willing  witness  could  be  found 
as  easily  as  the  superserviceable  judge.  The  treacherous  spy 
and  the  base  informer  would  stock  the  market  with  abundant 
perjury;  for  the  authorities  that  employ  them  will  be  bound 
to  protect  as  well  as  to  reward  them." 

The  voice  is  the  voice  of  Jeremiah  Black,  but  the 
doctrine  is  the  doctrine  of  Reverdy  Johnson;  in  this 
instance  received  without  insult  at  the  bar  and  soon  to 
be  sanctioned  from  the  bench. 

General  Butler  replied  for  the  United  States,  and, 
by  his  very  first  concession,  nullified  by  anticipation 
the  sole  distinction  subsequently  sought  to  be  drawn 
between  the  case  in  which  he  was  engaged  and  the 
case  of  the  accused  assassins.  ''We  do  firmly  agree 
that  if  at  the  time  of  these  occurrences  there  were  no 
military  operations  in  Indiana,  if  there  was  no  army 
there,  if  there  was  no  necessity  of  armed  forces  there 
.  .  .  then  this  commission  had  no  jurisdiction  to  deal 
with  the  relator,  and  the  question  proposed  may  as 
well  be  answered  in  the  negative.  .  .  .  The  great  and 


160  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

determining  fact  stated,  without  which  we  have  no 
standing  in  court,  is  that  these  acts  of  Milligan  and  his 
felonious  associates  took  place  in  the  theatre  of  mili- 
tary operations  within  the  lines  of  the  army,  in  a 
state  which  had  been  and  then  was  threatened  with 
invasion." 

In  warding  off  the  point  that  the  civil  courts  were 
open,  Butler  did  but  echo  Bingham:  ''If  the  soldiers 
of  the  United  States,  by  their  arms  had  not  held  the 
state  from  intestine  domestic  foes  within  and  the 
attacks  of  traitors  without  .  .  .  there  would  have  been 
no  courts  in  Indiana  where  a  judge  could  sit  in  peace 
to  administer  the  law. ' '  He  reminds  the  court  that  civil 
courts  were  in  session  in  Washington  during  the  whole 
of  the  rebellion  and  yet  the  capital  was  ''nearly  the 
whole  of  the  whole  time  under  martial  law";  their 
courts  being  but  the  ordinary  tribunals  and  in  opera- 
tion "only  by  permission  by  the  military  power" — 
overlooking  the  fact  that  the  tribunal  he  was  address- 
ing held  its  regular  terms  every  winter  of  the  war.* 

What  is  still  more  noteworthy,  General  Butler 
agreed  with  General  Ewing  in  the  latter 's  audacious 
assertion:  "You,  gentlemen,  are  no  court."  To  call 
a  military  commission  "a  court,"  says  the  recent  mili- 
tary commander  of  New  Orleans,  is  a  " mistake. "  "It 
is  not  a  court  either  under  or  by  virtue  of,  or  without 
the  Constitution."  "Whatever  it  may  be"  it  "de- 
rives its  power  and  authority  wholly  from  martial  law 
and  by  that  law  .  .  .  only  are  its  proceedings  to  be 
adjudged  and  reviewed."    A  dearth  of  precedents  he 

*  Note  II  to  thi8  chapter  in  Appendix. 


QUESTION   OF   JUEISDICTION  161 

admits,  but  he  claims  "it  is  because  the  facts  are  un- 
precedented." Show  us  an  instance  **in  a  civilized 
and  Christian  country  where  almost  one  half  of  its 
citizens  undertook,  without  cause,  to  overthrow  the 
government  and  where  coward  sympathizers  .  .  ► 
plotted  in  the  security  given  by  the  protecting  arms 
of  the  other  half  to  aid  such  rebellion  and  treason,  and 
we  will  perhaps  show  a  precendent  for  hanging  such 
traitors  by  military  commissions."  ''This,"  says  the 
counsel,  as  if  certain  of  his  cause,  "is  the  value  of  this 
case ;  whenever  we  are  thrown  into  war  again  ...  we 
shall  have  set  precedents  how  a  nation  may  preserve 
itself  from  self-destruction." 

The  court  did  indeed  establish  a  precedent  of  exceed- 
ing great  value;  but  of  a  kind  the  reverse  of  that 
which  the  counsel  so  confidently  anticipated.  On  the 
third  day  of  April,  this  tribunal  created  by  the  Con- 
stitution, composed  of  nine  judges  holding  office  during 
good  behavior,  without  a  dissenting  voice  ordered  the 
discharge  of  Milligan  and  his  co-defendants  on  the 
ground  that  the  military  commission  had  no  right  to 
try  and  condemn  them ;  and,  in  pursuance  of  the  order, 
the  President  remitted  the  further  execution  of  their 
sentence.  At  the  opening  of  the  December  term,  two 
opinions  were  handed  down;  one  written  by  Justice 
Davis — the  life-long  friend  of  Lincoln  who,  while  Presi- 
dent, elevated  him  to  the  bench — and  concurred  in  by 
four  of  his  associates ;  and  one  by  the  Chief  Justice — 
concurred  in  by  three.     That,  as  a  matter  of  law,  the 

President  had  no  power  to  institute  the  commission  in 
11 


162  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

question  and  that,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  Congress 
had  not  empowered  him  to  do  so,  the  court  was  unani- 
mous; but,  whereas  the  majority  held  that  the  Con- 
gress had  no  power  to  authorize  such  a  tribunal,  the 
minority  held  otherwise  had  the  Congress  seen  fit  to 
exercise  it.*  The  guarantees  of  the  Constitution  were 
treated  with  much  more  reverent  touch  by  the  Supreme 
Court  than  by  Bingham  and  Butler.  "These  securi- 
ties for  personal  liberty,"  said  Judge  Davis,  ''were 
such  as  wisdom  and  experience  had  demonstrated  to 
be  necessary  for  the  protection  of  those  accused  of 
crime.  And  so  strong  was  the  sense  of  the  country 
of  their  importance,  and  so  jealous  were  the  people 
that  these  rights  might  be  denied  by  implication,  that 
when  the  original  Constitution  was  proposed  for 
adoption,  .  .  .  but  for  the  belief  that  it  would  be 
amended  so  as  to  embrace  them,  it  would  never  have 
been  ratified." 

Listen  to  the  judicial  refutation  of  the  doctrine  that 
governed,  alike,  the  commission  in  the  Milligan  case 
and  the  commission  in  the  case  of  Mrs.  Surratt : 

"The  Constitution  of  the  United  States  is  a  law  for 
rulers  and  people,  equally  in  war  and  in  peace,  and  covers 
with  the  shield  of  its  protection  all  classes  of  men  at  all  times, 
and  under  all  circumstances.  No  doctrine,  involving  more 
pernicious  consequences,  was  ever  invented  by  the  wit  of 
man  than  that  any  of  its  provisions  can  be  suspended  during 
any  of  great  exigencies  of  government.  Such  a  doctrine  leads 
directly  to  anarchy  or  despotism," 

*  See  Note  at  end  of  chapter. 


QUESTION   OF   JURISDICTION  163 

"It  is  not  pretended  that  the  commission  was  a  court 
ordained  or  established  by  Confess."  They  cannot  justify 
on  the  mandate  of  the  President;  because  he  is  controlled 
by  law  and  has  his  appropriate  sphere  of  duty,  which  is  to 
execute  and  not  make  the  law." 

On  the  other  hand  "the  common  law  of  war,"  so 
cherished  by  Holt  and  Speed,  found  but  scant  favor: 

"But  it  is  said  that  the  jurisdiction  is  complete  under  the 
'laws  and  usages  of  war.'  It  can  serve  no  useful  purpose  to 
inquire  what  those  laws  and  usages  are,  where  found,  and 
on  whom  they  operate;  they  can  never  be  applied  to  citizens 
in  states  which  have  upheld  the  authority  of  the  government, 
and  where  the  courts  are  open  and  their  process  unobstructed. 
And  no  usage  of  war  could  sanction  a  military  trial  there  for 
any  offence  whatever  of  a  citizen  in  civil  life,  in  nowise  con- 
nected with  the  military  service.  Congress  could  grant  no 
such  power ;  and  to  the  honor  of  our  national  legislature  be 
it  said  it  has  never  been  provoked  by  the  state  of  the  country 
even  to  attempt  its  exercise." 

"Citizens  of  states  where  the  courts  are  open,  if  charged 
with  crime,  are  guaranteed  the  inestimable  privilege  of  trial 
by  jury.  This  privilege  is  a  vital  principle,  underlying  the 
whole  administration  of  criminal  justice ;  it  is  not  held  by 
sufferance,  and  cannot  be  frittered  away  on  any  plea  of  state 
or  political  necessity." 

"But  it  is  claimed  that  martial  law  covers  with  its  broad 
mantle  the  proceedings  of  this  military  commission,  ...  It 
will  be  borne  in  mind  that  this  is  not  a  question  of  the  power 
to  proclaim  martial  law,  when  war  exists  in  a  community  and 
the  courts  and  civil  authorities  are  overthrown.  ...  If  armies 
were   collected   in   Indiana,   they  were  to   be   employed  in 


164  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

another  locality,  where  the  laws  were  obstructed  and  the 
national  authority  disputed.  On  her  soil  there  was  no  hostile 
foot;  if  once  invaded,  that  invasion  was  at  an  end,  and  with 
it  all  pretext  for  martial  law.  Martial  law  cannot  arise  from 
a  threat ened  invasion.  The  necessity  must  be  actual  and 
present ;  the  invasion  real,  such  as  effectually  closes  the  courts 
and  deposes  the  civil  administration.  ...  As  necessity  asserts 
the  rule,  so  it  limits  its  duration;  for  if  this  government  is 
continued  after  the  courts  are  reinstated,  it  is  a  gross  usurpa- 
tion of  power.  Martial  law  can  never  exist  where  the  courts 
are  open,  and  in  the  proper  and  unobstructed  exercise  of 
their  jurisdiction.  It  is  also  confined  to  the  locality  of  actual 
war."* 

*The  following  from  the  opinion  of  Chase  presents  the  precise  point 
of  difference  between  the  majority  and  the  minority  of  the  court: 

"We  cannot  doubt  that  in  such  a  time  of  public  danger,"  as  existed 
in  the  state  of  Indiana  at  the  time  of  the  arrests  in  this  case,  ' '  Congress 
had  power  ...  to  provide  for  the  organization  of  a  military  commission 
for  the  trial  of  persons  engaged  in  this  conspiracy.  The  fact  that  the 
Federal  courts  were  open  was  regarded  by  Congress  as  a  sufficient  rea- 
son for  not  exercising  the  power;  but  that  fact  could  not  deprive 
Congress  of  the  right  to  exercise  it.  .  .  .  That  body  did  not  see  fit  to 
authorize  trials  by  military  commissions  .  .  .  but"  (in  the  act  suspend- 
ing the  habeas  corpus  providing  for  the  discharge  of  the  prisoners  held 
under  it,  if  not  brought  to  trial  speedily  in  the  regular  courts)  "by  the 
strongest  implication  prohibited  them." 

Majority:  Davis,  Nelson,  Grier,  Clifford,  Field. 

Minority:  Chase,  Wayne,  Swayne,  Miller. 

{Ex  parte  Milligan,  4  Wall.    U.  S.  Eep.,  p.  2.) 


CHAPTER   VII 

The  Dwindling  of  the  ''Great  Conspiracy" 

This  blow  to  the  validity  of  the  military  commission 
that  tried  the  accused  assassins  had  scarcely  been 
delivered  before  the  cornerstone  of  its  judgment  began 
to  crumble.  To  its  death-dealing  sentences  was  indis- 
solubly  linked  its  finding  that  Jefferson  Davis  was  the 
prime  instigator  of  the  assassination.  Two  companies 
of  United  States  soldiers,  having  fired  upon  each  other 
in  their  furious  haste  to  be  the  first  to  seize  the  dis- 
tinguished fugitive,  were  already  engaged  in  a  shame- 
ful scramble  before  the  House  of  Representatives  over 
the  enormous  reward  offered  for  his  capture.  The 
country  clamored  for  his  punishment;  and,  if  the 
tribunal  that  convicted  his  alleged  accomplices  was 
justified  in  pronouncing  him  guilty,  there  was  nothing 
to  do  but  to  convene  another  of  the  same  species  to 
reiterate  the  verdict  and  order  its  execution.  To  this 
plain  course,  the  chief  obstacle  was  that  the  late  presi- 
dent of  the  Southern  Confederacy  was,  at  least,  no 
"brigand,  bushwacker  or  jayhawker"  to  be  arraigned 
in  his  irons  within  the  walls  of  Fort  Monroe  before  a 
board  of  officers,  every  one  of  whom,  it  might  be  said, 
he  had  confronted  on  the  field  of  battle.  If  a  trial, 
under  ''the  common  law  of  war,"  must  take  place  it 
must  be  a  trial  that,  like  a  city  set  upon  a  hill,  could 
not  be  hid — ^must  be,  as  the  doomed  regicide  boasted, 
"a  deed  not  done  in  a  corner." 

(165) 


166  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

It  behooved  the  Bureau  of  Military  Justice,  there- 
fore, to  look  well  to  its  evidence.  On  the  recent  trial 
the  witnesses  on  this  branch  of  the  issue,  as  we  have 
seen,  were  paid  emissaries  detailing  scraps  of  con- 
versation with  the  leading  Confederates  in  Canada 
and  parol  versions  of  letters  purporting  to  be  from  the 
Riclmiond  authorities — testimony  taken  behind  closed 
doors,  without  regard  to  the  elementary  rules  of  evi- 
dence and  unchecked  by  cross-examination.  The  man- 
agers of  the  Bureau  were  fully  conscious  that,  if  they 
could  not  make  a  better  showing  than  this,  they  would 
not  dare  to  bring  their  case  into  the  fierce  light  that 
would  beat  upon  a  military  commission  before  which 
Davis  and  Clay  were  battling  for  their  lives.  Accord- 
ingly, they  cast  about  to  obtain  some  of  the  documents 
with  the  contents  of  which  their  witnesses  claimed  to 
be  so  familiar.  The  indefatigable  Baker,  as  the  result 
of  another  trip  to  Canada,  brought  back  a  memor- 
andum of  eight  letters  from  Davis  to  Thompson  which 
he  said  he  saw  but  was  not  permitted  to  copy,  much 
less  to  carry  away,  unless  their  holders  were  paid  a 
sum  which  Baker  put  as  high  as  twenty  thousand 
dollars.  Of  one  of  them,  dated  the  eighth  of  March, 
he  went  so  far  as  to  furnish  a  specimen  extract:  *'The 
consummation  of  the  act  that  would  have  done  more 
to  have  ended  strife,  being  delayed,  has  probably 
ruined  our  cause," — followed  by  a  Latin  sentence 
which  Baker  could  not  recall  but  which  Holt  thought 
''would  furnish  a  key  to  the  whole  matter."  But  this 
promising  clue  was  not  followed  up,  probably  because 
Baker's  price  was  too  high,  and,  the  next  summer, 


DWINDLING  OF  THE  CONSPIRACY      167 

when  Holt  sent  his  own  agent  with  funds  after,  the 
letters,  the  messenger  returned  empty-handed  and 
with  the  decided  impression  that  the  precious  docu- 
ments were  fabulous.*  Parallel  with  Baker's  search, 
the  attorney  general  entered  into  a  negotiation  with 
Cleary  to  purchase  the  papers  of  his  chief  for  the  same 
amount  of  money  offered  for  the  private  secretary's 
own  arrest ;  but,  by  the  time  this  member  of  the  cabinet 
reached  the  border  with  the  money  in  his  hand,  Cleary 
had  read  the  testimony  against  him  before  the  com- 
mission and  refused  to  surrender  papers  to  be  used 
in  its  support.f  In  such  a  dearth  of  corroboratory 
proofs,  the  only  recourse  was  another  draft  upon  the 
unlimited  resources  of  the  acknowledged  head  of  these 
witnesses  by  profession. 

The  judge  advocate  general,  it  has  been  said  by  an 
excellent  authority,  ''was  credulous  to  the  extent  of 
accepting  as  truth  nearly  all  the  statements  of  detec- 
tives and  alarmists"  ;t  nay,  more,  by  daily  intercourse 
with  creatures  of  this  species,  he  had  contracted  a 
veritable  mania,  so  that  the  wilder  a  tale  the  more 
hospitable  was  its  welcome.  If  Conover  was,  as  he 
was  called,  the  Titus  Oates  of  the  "Great  Conspiracy,'* 
then  Holt  was  its  Shaftesbury ;  swallowing  with  gusto 
every  romance  this  most  abandoned  of  men  was  ever 
ready  to  invent  for  him.  And,  as  will  be  seen,  nothing 
could  shake  permanently  his  faith  in  his  protege — 
neither  confession  nor  flight,  neither  betrayal,   con- 

*  Holt 's  testimony,  Imp.  Inv.,  28-29 ;  Baker 's  testimony,  Imp.  Inv., 
30-31. 

t  Speed's  testimony,  Imp.  Inv.,  804-5. 
tEhodes'  Hist.  (U.  S.),  V,  327. 


168  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

viction  nor  imprisonment.  It  was  Conover  who  testi- 
fied before  the  commission  that  about  a  week  before 
the  assassination  he  was  in  Thompson's  room  in  Mon- 
treal when  Surratt  entered  with  despatches  from 
Richmond — one  from  Benjamin,  the  Confederate  Sec- 
retary of  State,  and  a  letter  in  cipher  from  Davis — on 
the  perusal  of  which  Thompson  exclaimed:  ''This 
makes  it  all  right."  To  bolster  up  this  bit  of  testi- 
mony, Conover,  in  the  fall  of  1865,  brought  to  the 
Bureau  seven  deponents — among  them  his  wife  and 
sister, — and  Holt  reduced  their  statements  to  writing 
which  were  sworn  to  before  him.  Among  the  rest 
were  two  men,  passing  under  the  names  of  Campbell 
and  Sneval,  who  deposed  that  early  in  the  spring  of 
1865  they  were  present  at  an  interview  between 
Surratt  on  the  one  hand,  and  Benjamin  and  Davis  on 
the  other,  in  the  capitol  at  Richmond,  when  the  plot 
to  murder  President  Lincoln  was  discussed  and  ap- 
proved. Some  of  these  witnesses  were  taken  by  Holt 
before  the  President  and  the  Secretary  of  State  and 
subjected  to  another  examination,  but  so  far  as 
appears,  without  result.*  In  fact,  it  was  from  the 
President  and  the  Secretary  of  State  that  the  pro- 
pulsive ardor  of  the  managers  of  the  prosecution 
received  its  first  check.  Johnson's  persistence  in  fol- 
lowing the  plan  of  his  predecessor  for  the  recon- 
struction of  the  lately  insurgent  states  wrought  a 
change  in  his  attitude  toward  traitors  most  surprising 
in  one  whose  life  had  been  spared  only  because  of  the 

*  Eeports  of  Assassination  Committee,  No.  104,  1st  Sess.,  39th  Cong., 
H.  E.,  July,  1866. 


DWINDLING  OF  THE  CONSPIRACY      169 

lack  of  nerve  in  the  wretch  appointed  to  slay  him. 
Not  only  was  a  general  amnesty  proclaimed,  but 
special  pardons  to  prominent  secessionists  in  the 
excepted  classes  fell  thick  and  fast.  Baker,  by  a  too 
rigid  surveillance  over  the  pardon-brokers  haunting 
the  White  House,  made  his  presence  there  intolerable, 
and  the  veteran  detective,  in  revenge,  was  soon  in  hot 
pursuit  of  a  letter  from  the  former  military  governor 
of  Tennessee  making  overtures  to  President  Davis, 
which,  like  the  letters  from  Davis  to  Thompson,  he 
professed  to  have  read  but  never  was  able  to  recover.* 
Clemency,  indeed,  became  the  order  of  the  day.  Even 
O'Laughlin,  Arnold,  Spangler  and  Mudd,  languishing 
on  the  burning  sands  of  the  Tortugas,  caught  gleams 
of  hope.t  As  for  Jefferson  Davis,  did  not  Speed,  the 
author  of  the  opinion  in  pursuance  of  which  the  mili- 
tary commission  was  organized,  declare  he  could  not 
be  tried  by  such  a  tribunal,  but  must  be  tried  by  a  jury 
for  treason?  In  November,- the  Minister  of  War  re- 
voked the  rewards  for  the  arrest  of  Thompson,  San- 
ders and  Cleary  and  John  H.  Surratt.|  In  the  midst 
of  this  retiring  ebb,  came  the  opinions  in  the  Milligan 
case,  and  the  discomfiture  of  the  Bureau  was  complete. 
But  the  radicals  in  the  Congress,  crowding  to  the 
front  of  the  hand-to-hand  struggle  with  an  apostate 
President,  knew  but  little  of,  and  cared  less  for,  the 
embarrassments  of  the  managers  of  this  institution. 

*  L.  C.  Baker 's  testimony  on  Imp.  Inv. 

t  Life  of  Dr.  Mudd  by  daughter  (Neale  Pub.  Co.),  Chap.  XII. 

t  Speed's  testimony  on  Imp.  Inv.  ut  supra;  Stanton's  testimony  in 
Eeport  of  Sec.  of  State  to  H.  E.,  39th  Cong.,  2nd  Sess.,  Dec,  1866.  Ex. 
Doc.  No.  9. 


170  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

On  the  ninth  of  April,  1866,  the  House  adopted  a  reso- 
lution instructing  the  judiciary  committee  to  inquire 
whether  there  was  probable  cause  to  believe  that  any 
of  the  persons  named  in  the  proclamation  of  rewards 
of  May  3rd,  1865,  were  guilty  as  alleged,  and,  if  so, 
whether  any  legislation  was  necessary  to  bring  them 
to  trial ;  and  in  the  debate  that  ensued  the  views  of  the 
leaders  were  given  to  the  world. 

"Jefferson  Davis  is  no  ordinary  assassin  or  pirate.  .  .  . 
He  stands  charged  by  the  government  with  the  murder  of 
the  President  .  .  .  and  that  charge,  as  I  am  well  assured, 
is  amply  verified  by  proofs  which  wUl  soon  be  given  to  the 
public,  and  awaken  a  stronger  and  sterner  demand  for  his 
punishment. 

"The  nation  cannot  afford  to  submit  the  question  of  the 
right  of  a  state  to  secede  to  a  jury  of  twelve  men  in  one  of 
the  rebel  states.  .  .  .  Let  Jefferson  Davis  be  tried  by  a  mili- 
tary court  as  he  should  have  been  promptly  at  the  time  other 
and  smaller  offenders  were  dealt  with  a  year  ago.  Let  him 
have  the  compliment  of  a  formal  inquiry  to  determine  what 
the  whole  world  already  knows,  that  he  is  immeasurably 
guilty.  And  when  that  guilt  is  pronounced,  let  the  govern- 
ment erect  a  gallows  and  hang  him  in  the  name  of  the  Most 
High."* 

The  proofs  so  confidently  alluded  to  by  the  orator 
as  about  to  be  given  to  the  public  consisted  of  Coiio- 
ver's  testimony  on  the  Conspiracy  Trial  and  the  de- 
positions of  the  witnesses  he  had  brought  to  the  Bureau 
and  which  Holt  laid  before  the  committee,  accom- 
panied by  an  "explanatory  argument."    Before  the 

*  Glohe,  39th  Cong.,  1st  Sess.,  pp.  1854,  2283-4. 


DWINDLING  OF  THE  CONSPIRACY      171 

committee,  Conover  appeared  in  person ;  his  testimony 
was  read  over  to  him  and  lie  re-swore  to  its  truth. 
Merritt,  another  witness  before  the  commission,  also, 
appeared  and  acknowledged  on  cross-examination  that 
he  had  received  for  his  services  six  thousand  dollars. 
Campbell  and  Sneval,  having  been  brought  from  New 
York,  confounded  their  suborner  by  testifying  that 
the  depositions  were  written  out  for  them  by  him  and 
sworn  to  for  pay.  Conover  denounced  his  betrayers 
as  enemies  to  his  country  in  such  moving  terms  that 
the  committee  allowed  him  to  go  to  New  York  to  find 
other  witnesses;  in  which  city  he  escaped  from  the 
officer  having  him  in  custody  and  disappeared.  The 
crestfallen  judge  advocate  reappeared  before  the  com- 
mittee, protesting  that  "there  was  nothing  in  the  testi- 
mony" of  the  persons  he  examined, '' or  in  their  manner 
calculated  to  excite  doubt  as  to  their  truthfulness," 
but  acknowledging  that  Conover 's  disappearance  "had 
left  on  his  mind"  a  strong  impression  that  Conover 
had  been  guilty  of  a  most  atrocious  crime  committed 
under  what  promptings  he  "was  unable  to  determine." 
The  majority  of  the  committee,  in  their  report  to  the 
House,  observed  that  the  retracting  deponents  "failed 
to  state  any  inducement  or  consideration  which  seemed 
a  reasonable  explanation  of  the  course  they  had  pur- 
sued," and,  on  this  account,  the  committee  were  "not 
able  to  say  whether  the  original  statements  are  true 
or  false";  nevertheless  they  conclude  that  "the  testi- 
mony taken  on  the  trial  of  the  assassins  justifies  the 
inference  that  the  murder  of  Mr.  Lincoln  was  pro- 
cured by  the  use  of  money  furnished  by  the  Kichmond 


172  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

government";  and  recommend  the  adoption  of  a  reso- 
lution ' '  that  it  is  the  duty  of  the  executive  department 
...  to  proceed  with  the  investigation  of  the  facts 
connected  with  the  assassination  .  .  .  without  un- 
necessary delay,  that  Jefferson  Davis  and  others 
named  in  the  proclamation  .  .  .  may  be  put  upon  trial 
and  properly  punished  if  guilty,  or  relieved  from  the 
charges  against  them  if  innocent"; — a  recommenda- 
tion wliich  the  House  followed  at  the  close  of  the 
session.* 

During  the  recess  the  judge  advocate  appealed  to 
the  public  in  a  pamphlet  entitled:  ''A  Vindication  of 
Judge  Holt  from  the  foul  slanders  of  traitors,  con- 
fessed perjurers  and  suborners,  acting  in  the  interest 
of  Jefferson  Davis, ' '  to  which  were  appended  exculpa- 
tory letters  from  Stanton  and  Boutwell,  the  chairman 
of  the  committee.  That,  by  the  date  of  this  publica- 
tion, he  had  discovered  "under  what  promptings"  his 
favorite  witness  committed  his  "atrocious  crime," 
which  when  before  the  committee  he  "was  unable  to 
determine,"  sufficiently  appears  from  the  following 
extract : 

"It  is  clear  that  a  conspiracy  has  been  formed  to  defame 
the  judge  advocate  general  and  the  Bureau  of  Military  Just- 
ice. At  the  bottom  of  this  conspiracy  or  actively  engaged  in 
executing  its  purposes  is  Sanford  Conover,  who,  after  having 
been  fully  proved  guilty  of  subornation  of  perjury,  has  un- 
questionably sold  himself  to  the  friends  of  Davis  and  is  seek- 
ing with  them  to  destroy  the  reputation  of  a  public  ofl&cer 

*  Reports  of  Assassination  Committee  cited  supra. 


DWINDLING  OF  THE  CONSPIRACY      173 

whose  confidence  he  gained  ...  by  the  most  solemn  protes- 
tations. '  '* 

Let  us  hasten  to  the  end  of  this  odious  business. 
In  November  following,  under  a  warrant  issued  on  the 
affidavit  of  Campbell  under  the  name  of  Hoone,  Cono- 
ver  was  arrested  and  brought  to  Washington,  enter- 
taining the  officer  on  the  way  by  confessing  that  he 
suborned  the  witnesses  from  a  desire  to  avenge  him- 
self on  Jefferson  Davis  by  whose  order  he  had  been 
confined  in  ''Castle  Thunder"  and  who  had,  besides, 
''insulted  his  wife."  Indicted  under  the  name  of 
Charles  A.  Dunham  for  perjury  committed  in  his  tes- 
timony contradicting  Campbell,  he  was  tried  in  Wash- 
ington in  February,  1867,  convicted,  and  sentenced  to 
ten  years'  imprisonment  in  the  Albany  Penitentiary.f 

Thus  fell  the  main  pillar  of  the  ' '  Great  Conspiracy. ' ' 
The  President  and  those  members  of  the  cabinet  who 
stood  by  their  chief,  for  their  part,  let  Holt's  "atro- 
cious" criminal  lie  where  he  had  fallen — Secretary 
Seward  testifying  as  follows : 

"My  own  theory  about  Jefferson  Davis  was  that  until  this 
proclamation  was  withdrawn  and  peace  was  proclaimed  by 
the  President,  Jefferson  Davis  was  amenable  to  trial  for  com- 
plicity with  the  assa.ssin  ...  if  there  was  evidence  of  it  .  .  . 
One  or  two  witnesses  were  examined  before  the  President  and 
myself.  .  .  .  Sometime  after  that,  the  testimony  of  these  wit- 
nesses was  discredited  and  destroyed  by  transactions  in  which 

*  Pamphlet  in  Cong.  Lib.  See  A  Belle  of  the  Fifties,  by  Mrs.  C.  C. 
Clay,  326-7. 

t  Eeports  of  Assassination  Committee  cited  above  and  Note  I  in  Ap- 
pendix. 


174  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

Conover  appeared  and  the  evidence  of  the  alleged  compli- 
city of  Jefferson  Davis  thereupon  failed."* 

While  these  disgraceful  circumstances  were  being 
brought  to  light  the  combat  between  the  '  *  acting  Presi- 
dent" (as  his  enemies  were  careful  to  style  him)  and 
the  party  who  put  him  in  the  line  of  succession  deep- 
ened. Johnson,  instead  of  making  treason  and  traitors 
in  the  South  odious  by  the  use  of  the  rope,  went  *  *  swing- 
ing around  the  circle,"  making  treason  and  traitors 
in  the  North  odious  by  the  use  of  his  power  of  speech. 
The  principal  cities  of  the  West  greeted  him  with 
taunts  and  jeers  and  threats;  and,  in  the  fall,  he  met 
with  overwhelming  defeat  at  the  polls.  When  Con- 
gress met  for  the  short  session,  the  majority,  deeply 
mortified  by  the  recollection  of  the  panic  into  which 
they  had  been  thrown  during  the  campaign,  were  so 
enraged  by  the  apparent  determination  of  their  an- 
tagonist to  keep  up  the  fight  as  to  actually  believe  that, 
in  condemning  Atzerodt,  the  commission  had  fallen 
into  a  shocking  blunder,  the  signer  of  his  death  war- 
rant being  in  fact  his  partner  in  the  conspiracy.  Loan, 
a  representative  from  Missouri,  said  on  the  floor:  "An 
assassin's  bullet,  wielded  and  directed  by  rebel  hands 
and  paid  for  by  rebel  gold,  made  Andrew  Johnson 
President.  The  price  he  was  to  pay  for  his  promotion 
was  treachery  to  the  Republic  and  fidelity  to  the  party 
of  treason  and  rebellion."  Ashley  of  Ohio  spoke  of 
Johnson  as  ''the  man  who  came  into  the  Presidency 
through  the  door  of  assassination,"  and  called  atten- 

*  Imp.  Inv.,  379-80. 


DWINDLING  OF  THE  CONSPIRACY      175 

tion  to  *'tlie  dark  suspicion  that  crept  over  the  minds 
of  men  as  to  his  complicity  in  the  assassination  plot.'* 
And  Conover  (alias  Dunham),  instead  of  being  taken 
to  the  penitentiary  to  serve  out  his  sentence,  was 
detained  in  the  jail  of  the  District  that  he  might  earn 
his  pardon  by  fabricating  evidence  against  this 
usurper  of  the  pardoning  i)ower.  Give  him  liberty, 
he  implored  the  representatives  who  visited  his  cell, 
and  he  could  lay  his  hands  on  witnesses  and  documents 
to  prove  that  Johnson  and  Booth  had  corresponded 
with  each  other;  that,  at  the  second  inauguration,  it 
was  arranged  that  Booth  should  kill  Lincoln,  an 
arrangement  which  accounted  for  the  Vice  President's 
strange  conduct  on  that  occasion;  that  Booth  paid 
several  visits  to  Johnson  at  the  Kirkwood,  the  con- 
cealment of  weapons  in  that  hotel  being  a  mere  blind 
to  cause  it  to  appear  that  the  Vice  President  was  an 
intended  victim;  that  Booth  boasted  in  his  flight  of 
having  made  Andy  Johnson  President  and  '*if  he  went 
back  on  liim  he  would  have  him  hung  higher  than 
Haman. ' ' 

To  such  preposterous  proposals,  the  impeachers  not 
only  lent  a  willing  ear,  but  they  drafted  for  the  pro- 
ponent a  petition  for  his  pardon  to  the  officer  they 
meant  to  impeach,  which  the  judge  advocate,  notwith- 
standing his  recent  experience  of  the  perfidy  of  the 
witness,  backed  with  his  recommendation.* 

Another  incident  of  the  Impeachment  Investigation 
added  fuel  to  the  flames.  The  reappearance  of  Baker 
before  the  committee,  while  it  did  not  result  in  the 

*  See  my  Impeachment  and  Trial  of  President  Johnson,  278-81,  292. 


176  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

production  of  the  letter  of  Johnson,  did  lead  to  the 
unearthing  of  the  diary  of  Booth.  This  little  book 
disappeared  from  view  from  the  day  it  was  delivered 
to  Stanton  until  it  was  passed  over  to  the  judge  advo- 
cate just  before  the  convening  of  the  military  commis- 
sion. Stanton  suppressed  it  for  the  same  reason  that 
he  ordered  the  secret  burial  of  the  dead  author.  Holt 
suppressed  it,  not  so  much  because  it  was  not,  strictly 
speaking,  competent  evidence,  as  because  its  produc- 
tion would  have  gone  far  to  establish  a  premeditated 
plot  to  capture,  the  failure  of  which  begat  the  design 
to  kill.  The  consequence  was  that,  in  the  voluminous 
mass  of  testimony  taken  at  the  trial,  there  was  not  the 
slightest  indication  that  the  crippled  outlaw  left  behind 
him  an  apology  for  his  crime,  and  the  country  might 
have  been  dependent  upon  mere  rumor  for  its  knowl- 
edge of  so  interesting  a  relic,  had  it  not  been  for  the 
publication  of  Baker's  History  of  the  Secret  Service, 
in  which  mention  was  made  of  a  memorandum  record- 
ing *'the  adventures  of  the  fugitives."*  The  author 
of  the  work,  being  interrogated  on  the  subject  by  the 
chairman  of  the  committee,  testified  to  the  delivery  of 
the  diary  to  Stanton,  whereupon  a  subpoena  duces 
tecum  to  Holt  brought  the  hidden  document  before  that 
body.  Booth's  farewell  message,  so  far  as  himself 
was  concerned,  fell  flat  enough;  but,  concerning  the 
woman  whom  his  deed  dragged  to  a  felon's  doom,  its 
effect  was  widespread,  profound  and  enduring.  Gen- 
eral Butler,  the  recent  defender  of  military  commis- 
sions before  the  Supreme  Court,  of  all  men  in  the 

*  Baker 's  book,  508,  and  his  testimony  on  Imp.  Inv.,  452-3. 


DWINDLING  OF  THE  CONSPIRACY      177 

world,  became  her  champion.  Bingham,  on  the  floor 
of  the  House,  bearing  upon  his  brow  the  laurels  won 
as  special  judge  advocate,  in  an  unlucky  hour  was  pro- 
voked by  a  jocose  remark  of  the  gentleman  from  Massa- 
chusetts to  hold  ''the  hero  of  Fort  Fisher  not  taken" 
up  to  ridicule  as  but  a  carpet-knight;  thereby  laying 
himself  open  to  the  following  crushing  retort:  ''The 
gentleman  has  had  the  bad  taste  to  attack  me  for  the 
reason  that  I  could  do  no  more  injury  to  the  enemies 
of  my  comitry.  I  agree  to  that.  I  did  all  I  could,  the 
best  I  could.  .  .  .  But  the  only  victim  of  that  gen- 
tleman's prowess  that  I  know  of  was  an  innocent 
woman  hung  upon  the  scaffold,  one  Mrs.  Surratt.  And 
I  can  sustain  the  memory  of  Fort  Fisher  if  he  and  his 
present  associates  can  sustain  him  in  shedding  the 
blood  of  a  woman  tried  by  a  military  commission  and 
con^'icted  without  sufficient  evidence  in  my  judgment." 
Bingham,  in  reply,  protested  that  he  had  executed  no 
person,  had  but  acted  as  the  advocate  of  the  United 
States;  and,  then,  in  imperious  tones,  demanded  by 
what  right  the  member  assailed  "the  tribunal  of  true 
and  honorable  men  who  found  the  facts  upon  their 
oath  and  pronounced  the  judgment.  What  does  the 
gentleman  know  of  the  evidence  in  the  case,  and  what 
does  he  care?" 

This  demand,  a  few  days  later,  Butler  took  occa- 
sion to  answer : 

''I  hold  in  my  hand  the  evidence  as  reported  under  the 

gentleman's  official  sanction.  .  .  .  The  statement  I  made  the 

other  day  .  .  .  was  the  result  of  a  careful  examination  of 
12 


178  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHxUI  LINCOLN 

the  case  for  another  and  a  different  purpose,  in  the  endeavor 
to  ascertain  who  were  concerned  in  fact  in  the  great  con- 
spiracy to  assassinate  President  Lincoln.  The  gentleman  says 
he  was  'the  advocate  of  the  United  States  only.'  Sir,  he 
makes  a  wide  mistake  as  to  his  official  position.  He  was  the 
special  judge  advocate  whose  duty  it  was  to  protect  the  rights 
of  the  prisoner  as  well  as  the  rights  of  the  United  States,  and 
to  sum  up  the  evidence  and  state  the  law  as  would  a  judge  on 
the  bench.  Certainly,  it  was  his  duty  to  present  to  the  com- 
mission all  the  evidence  bearing  upon  the  case.  Now  there 
was  a  piece  of  evidence  within  the  knowledge  of  the  special 
judge  advocate  ,  .  .  which  he  did  not  produce  on  this  most 
momentous  trial." 

And,  alluding  to  the  appearance  of  the  diary  before 
the  committee,  he  continued: 

"Now,  what  I  want  to  know  is  this:  ...  If  it  was  good 
judgment  on  the  part  of  the  gentlemen  prosecuting  the  as- 
sassins ...  to  put  in  evidence  the  tobacco  pipe,  spur  and 
compass  found  in  Booth 's  pocket,  why  was  not  the  diary,  in  his 
own  handwriting  and  found  in  the  same  pocket,  put  in  evi- 
dence .  .  .  ?  And,  therefore,  I  did  not  charge  the  able  and 
gallant  soldiers  who  sat  on  that  court  with  having  done  any 
wrong.  They  did  not  see  the  diary,  they  did  not  know  of  the 
diary.  If  they  had  they  might  have  given  a  different  finding 
upon  the  matter  of  this  great  conspiracy.  ...  I  imderstand 
the  theory  to  be  that  that  evidence  was  not  produced  lest 
Booth's  glorification  of  himself  ,  .  .  should  go  before  the 
country.  I  think  that  a  lame  excuse.  If  an  assassin  can  glorify 
himself  let  him  do  so.  ...  I  believe  that  piece  of  evidence 
would  have  shown  what  the  whole  case,  in  my  judgment,  now 
shows ;  that  up  to  a  certain  hour  Booth  contemplated  capture 
and  abduction,  and  that  he  afterward  changed  his  purpose  to 


DTVIXDLIXG  OF  THE  COXSPIEACY      179 

assassination.  .  .  .  Now  what  I  find  fault  with,  in  the  judgB 
advocate  ...  is  that  in  his  very  able  and  bitter  argument 
against  the  prisoners,  no  notice  is  taken  ...  of  this  change 
of  purpose  and  brought  to  the  attention  of  the  men  who  com- 
posed that  militarv  tribunal.  And  if  Mrs.  Surratt  did  not 
know  of  this  change  of  purpose  there  is  no  evidence  that  she 
knew  in  any  way  of  the  assassination,  and  ought  not,  in  my 
judgment,  to  have  been  convicted  of  taking  part  in  it.  .  .  . 
"Although  in  some  aspects  of  the  case  it  might  not  have 
been  legal  evidence,  yet  in  all  aspects  it  was  moral  evidence, 
carrvinsr  conviction  to  the  moral  sense.  It  is  the  d\nn?  declara- 
tion  of  a  man,  assassin  though  he  be,  who  was  speaking  the 
truth,  probably  to  himself,  as  between  himself  and  his  God. ' ' 

The  general  was  not  satisfied  with  proclaiming  the 
innocence  of  Mrs.  Surratt,  but  he  took  advantage  of 
the  occasion  to  father  the  delusion  of  the  impeachers 
and  insinuate  the  complicity  of  the  President: 

' '  That  diary,  as  now  produced,  has  eighteen  pages  cut  out, 
the  pages  prior  to  the  time  when  Abraham  Lincoln  was 
massacred,  although  the  edges  as  yet  show  they  had  all  been 
written  over.  Now,  what  I  want  to  know,  was  that  diary 
whole?"  (Baker  when  on  the  stand  was  positive  the  leaves 
were  in  the  book  when  he  delivered  it  to  Stanton.)  ""Who 
spoliated  that  book?"  the  gentleman  demanded,  "VTho 
caused  an  innocent  woman  to  be  hung  when  he  had  in  his 
pocket  the  diary  which  stated  at  least  what  was  the  idea  and 
purpose  of  the  main  conspirator?" 

And,  quoting  from  memory  the  sentence  expressing 
Booth's  half -formed  purpose  to  return  to  TTasliing- 
ton  and  clear  himself,  he  vociferated: 


180  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

* '  How  clear  himself  ?  By  disclosing  his  accomplices  ?  Who 
were  they  ?  ...  If  we  had  only  the  advantage  of  all  the  testi- 
mony, we  might  have  been  able  ...  to  find  who,  indeed,  were 
all  the  accomplices  of  Booth ;  to  find  who  it  was  who  changed 
Booth's  purpose  from  capture  to  assassination;  who  it  was 
that  could  profit  by  assassination  who  could  not  profit  by  cap- 
ture and  abduction;  who  it  was  expected  would  succeed  to 
LincoLa,  if  the  knife  made  a  vacancy. '  '* 

So  lasting  was  the  sensation  caused  by  this  en- 
counter that,  when  the  Congress  convened  for  the  July 
session,  the  House,  on  Butler's  motion,  authorized  a 
special  committee  to  investigate  "all  the  facts  and 
circumstances  connected  with  the  assassination  tend- 
ing to  show  who  were  the  persons  engaged  in  the  con- 
spiracy," many  of  whom,  it  was  declared,  ''holding 
high  positions  of  power  and  authority  because  of  the 
•civil  war"  acted  "through  inferior  persons  who  were 
their  tools  and  instruments."  Furthermore,  the  com- 
mittee was  empowered  to  report  an  act  of  grace  and 
amnesty  to  every  person  contributing  evidence  "to 
bring  to  light  the  facts";  thereby  reopening  the  door 
for  a  second  swarm  of  professional  witnesses  ready 
to  place  their  oaths  at  the  service  of  their  country. 
To  this  body,  by  order  of  the  House,  all  the  testimony 
taken  by  the  judiciary  committee  concerning  the  assas- 
sination was  turned  over,  including  a  memorandum  of 
the  evidence  Conover  promised  to  procure  as  the  price 
of  his  pardon.  This  convicted  felon  "as  an  earnest" 
of  what  lie  could  do  in  this  line,  caused  to  be  brought 
to  Washington  two  persons  prepared  to  swear  to  the 

*  Globe,  1st  Sess.  40th  Cong.,  263,  363-4. 


DWINDLING  OF  THE  CONSPIRACY      181 

contents  of  his  memorandum,  who,  after  being  exam- 
ined by  Ashley  and  Butler,  would  have  given  their 
testimony,  had  not  Conover  refused  to  allow  them  to 
do  so  until  after  his  prison  doors  were  opened.* 

But  the  expiring  effort  of  this  committee  was  the 
despatch  of  an  emissary  to  the  Dry  Tortugas  to  extort 
from  the  four  prisoners  on  that  barren  isle  statements 
implicating  the  officer  whose  warrant  sent  them  there. 
For  two  years  and  over,  Arnold,  0  'Laughlin,  Spangler 
and  Mudd  had  been  kept  in  close  confinement  in  the 
cells  of  Fort .  Jeff erson.  In  August,  1867,  the  yellow 
fever  broke  out  in  the  garrison,  carrying  off,  among 
its  first  victims,  the  surgeon  in  charge.  In  this  emer- 
gency. Dr.  Mudd  volunteered  his  services,  devoting  his 
energies  and  his  professional  skill  to  the  relief  of 
the  sick  and  dying.  In  September,  0 'Laughlin  suc- 
cumbed to  the  epidemic,  adjuring  the  doctor  with  liis 
last  breath  to  '*tell  his  mother  all,"  and  whispering  to 
Spangler  a  "goodby,  Ned."  Every  non-commissioned 
officer  who  recovered  signed  a  petition  for  the  doctor's 
pardon,  which  for  some  reason  never  reached  the 
President.  At  length,  Mudd  himself  was  stricken 
down  and,  in  the  absence  of  a  physician,  owed  his 
life  to  the  assiduous  nursing  of  his  two  remaining 
comrades  in  misery.  Such  was  the  situation  at  the  fort 
when  the  agent  of  the  committee  arrived.  Giving 
notice  that  his  visit  must  be  kept  secret,  he  produced 
letters  from  General  Butler  authorizing  him  to  obtain 

*  Globe,  id.  515-7.  For  members  of  committee,  see  p.  522 ;  Impeach- 
ment Inv.,  1204,  1194  et  seq.,  1198-9;  Washington  Chronicle,  August 
10,  1867. 


182  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

the  statements  of  the  three  survivors.  One  by  one 
they  were  summoned  by  the  commanding  officer  into 
his  presence  and  forced  to  submit  to  examination. 
Each  was  told  that  if  he  would  implicate  others  in  the 
assassination,  he  would  be  released  from  imprisonment 
and  carried  to  Washington  as  a  witness.  Statements 
were  obtained  from  them;  but,  apparently,  not  of  a 
tenor  that  suited  the  agent  or  his  principals,  for  the 
former  left  the  post  ''much  disappointed";  and  noth- 
ing was  ever  heard  of  the  papers  he  took  with  him.* 
Even  while  he  was  about  his  nefarious  mission,  the 
defeat  of  the  first  impeachment  extinguished  the  body 
that  was  fitly  named  an  assassination  committee ;  and 
after  his  return  to  Washington  the  removal  of  Stanton 
furnished  the  majority  in  Congress  a  far  more  tenable 
ground  of  attack  than  the  removal  of  Lincoln.  The 
absurd  delusion,  however,  did  not  die  with  the  com- 
mittee. Not  even  the  defeat  of  the  final  impeachment, 
on  which  Bingham  was  as  violent  in  denigration  of 
Johnson  as  he  had  been  loud  in  his  praise  on  the  Con- 
spiracy Trial,  could  kill  it.  It  lingered  here  and  there 
— the  fixed  idea  of  morbid  brains — for  six  long  years, 
when,  in  an  elaborate  essay  to  establish  its  truth, 
ex-senator  Foote  laid  it  to  rest  forever. 

To  this  ignominious  end  was  brought  the  ''Great 
Conspiracy*'  which  Stanton  heralded  to  the  world  on 
the  morning  after  the  assassination.  It  accomplished 
nothing  in  furtherance  of  the  purpose  for  which  it  was 

*  Letter  from  Dr.  Mudd  in  his  Life  by  daughter  (above  cited),  p. 
296.  "The  Lincoln  Plot,"  by  Arnold,  published  in  Baltimore  Amer., 
1902,  and  N.  ¥.  Sun,  same  year. 


DWINDLING  OF  THE  CONSPIRACY      183 

fabricated.  Jefferson  Davis — all  hope  of  trying  him 
by  military  commission  being  abandoned — was  sur- 
rendered by  the  military  to  the  civil  authorities  and 
admitted  to  bail  on  an  indictment  for  treason;  Clay 
had  been  released  on  parole  a  year  before ;  Thompson 
and  Sanders  and  Tucker  and  Cleary  were  roaming  at 
will,  forgotten  if  not  forgiven.  The  sole  result  of  its 
blind  advocacy  on  the  part  of  the  prosecuting  officers 
was  to  sweep  within  the  purview  of  the  judgment  of 
the  court  the  woman  who  stood  at  the  bar  with  Payne, 
Atzerodt  and  Herold;  and  to  banish  to  a  prison  on  the 
Florida  reefs  four  men,  all  of  whom,  but  the  one  who 
died  of  yellow  fever,  were  about  to  be  pardoned.* 

*  Jefferson  Davis '  surrender,  May  13,  1867,  see  Century  for  Feb., 
1887;  Clay's  release,  Imp.  Inv.,  428,  550;  Mudd  pardoned,  Feb.,  1868; 
Spangler  and  Arnold,  March,  1869.     See  Life  of  Mudd,  ut  sup. 


CHAPTER  Vni 
The  Tkial  of  John  H.  Surratt 

One  conspirator  remained — a  conspirator  whom  the 
course  of  events  seemed  conspiring  to  force  upon  a 
government  anxious  to  get  rid  of  him. 

John  Harrison  Surratt,  it  will  be  remembered,  passed 
through  Washington  on  the  night  of  April  3rd,  1865, 
on  his  way  from  Richmond  to  Canada;  reached  Mon- 
treal on  the  sixth  and,  remaining  there  until  the 
twelfth,  took  the  afternoon  train  going  south.  His 
destination  was  Elmira,  a  town  in  the  interior  of  New 
York  state,  whither,  to  reconnoitre  the  military  prison 
there,  he  was  sent  by  the  Confederate  general  Edwin 
G.  Lee,  whom  he  chanced  to  meet  in  Montreal.  On  the 
thirteenth,  he  registered  at  the  Brainard  House  under 
the  pseudonym  of  ''John  Harrison";  the  next  day 
finished  the  business  which  brought  him  to  the  place; 
and,  that  night,  at  the  hour  when  Booth  and  Payne 
set  about  their  bloody  work,  three  hundred  miles  away, 
retired  to  his  bed.  He  woke  in  the  morning  to  find 
the  inhabitants  horror-stricken  at  the  news  of  the 
assassination  of  the  President;  and  it  was  not  until 
he  had  sent  a  telegram  to  Booth  in  New  York  to  ascer- 
tain if  the  actor  was  in  that  city,  that  he  learned  his 
late  colleague  in  the  plot  to  capture  was  identified  as 
the  assassin.  Unconscious  as  yet  of  his  own  danger, 
he  took  the  train  for  Canandaigua,  a  village  between 
fifty  and  sixty  miles  distant,  arriving  there  the  same 

(184) 


TRIAL   OF   JOHN   H.   SURRATT         185 

evening;  and,  no  train  leaving  until  Monday,  he  was 
obliged  to  stay  over,  registering  at  the  Webster  House 
under  the  same  name.  On  Monday,  seeing  in  a  news- 
paper John  H.  Surratt  mentioned  as  the  assassin  of 
Seward,  he  lost  no  time  in  crossing  the  border,  reach- 
ing his  hotel  in  Montreal  on  Tuesday  afternoon,  the 
eighteenth,  remaining  there  only  long  enough  to  get 
his  clothes,  and  vanishing  beyond  pursuit. 

While  his  mother  was  undergoing  the  torture  of  her 
trial,  he  lay  concealed  in  the  house  of  a  friendly  priest 
of  a  country  parish  some  forty  miles  from  Montreal ; 
hearing  no  news  from  Washington  until  too  late  to 
attempt  to  save  her  life  by  the  sacrifice  of  his  own. 
After  the  dreadful  catastrophe,  he  returned  to  the  city 
and  was  hidden  there  until  the  fifteenth  of  September 
when,  under  the  name  of  McCarty  and  in  disguise, 
he  was  taken  by  boat  to  Quebec  and  put  in  charge  of 
the  surgeon  of  a  steamer  about  to  start  for  Liverpool. 
The  reward  of  $25,000,  still  on  his  head,  made  him  a 
valuable  asset  to  his  custodian,  who,  as  soon  as  the 
vessel  reached  its  destination,  hastened  to  reveal  the 
presence  of  his  prize  to  the  vice-consul  of  the  United 
States.  This  intelligence,  together  with  certain  par- 
ticulars said  to  have  been  confided  to  the  informer  by 
the  fugitive  during  the  voyage,  was  transmitted  to 
Minister  Adams  at  London  and  to  Secretarv  Seward  at 
Washington,  to  be  met  by  these  officials  with  the  rebuff 
that  it  was  not  thought  advisable  to  take  any  steps  in 
the  matter  for  the  present.  The  surgeon,  disappointed 
at  the  result  of  his  first  effort,  sought  out  Surratt  and 
engaged  to  deliver  a  letter  to  a  mutual  friend  at  Mon- 


186  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

treal,  requesting  a  remittance  of  cash ; — a  trust  which 
he  discharged  at  the  end  of  his  return  voyage,  and, 
then,  made  a  second  effort  to  realize  the  fruit  of  his 
discover}^  by  betraying  the  situation  to  the  American 
consul  at  the  last-named  city.  That  officer  telegraphed 
the  facts  to  Washington,  suggesting  that  an  agent  be 
sent  out  with  the  steamer  about  to  sail,  to  arrest 
Surratt,  who,  on  his  way  to  Rome,  was  still  at  Liver- 
pool awaiting  the  supply  of  funds.  Moreover,  the 
telegram  was  followed  by  a  despatch  giving  the  par- 
ticulars of  the  interview  with  the  surgeon  who,  by  this 
time,  as  he  told  the  consul,  **  regarded  Surratt  as  a 
desperate  wretch  and  an  enemy  to  society." 

These  repeated  calls  to  action,  to  the  surprise  of 
every  one  cognizant  of  the  facts,  failed  to  stir  the 
managers  of  the  Bureau — recently  so  remarkable  for 
their  vigilance.  The  secretary  of  war  and  the  judge 
advocate  put  their  heads  together,  but  did  nothing. 
Seward  went  so  far  as  to  request  the  attornej^  general 
to  procure  an  indictment  with  a  view  to  extradition, 
but  the  request  was  not  acted  upon.  Nay,  the  only 
step  taken  was  in  an  opposite  direction — the  reward 
for  the  arrest  of  the  fugitive  was  publicly  withdrawn, 
and  that  interesting  personage  traveled  unhindered 
from  Liverpool  to  London,  from  London  to  Paris  and 
Paris  to  Rome,  where,  still  unmolested,  he  passed  the 
winter  at  the  English  college.  In  the  early  spring,  un- 
der the  name  of Watson,  he  enlisted  in  the  Papal 

Zouaves  and  was  sent  on  garrison  duty  to  a  post  near 
the  Neapolitan  frontier,  forty  miles  from  the  capital. 
There  he  might  have  remained  unknown  until  the 


TRIAL   OF   JOHN   H.   SURRATT  187 

expiration  of  his  term  of  service,  liad  it  not  been  for 
the  extraordinary  coincidence  that  there  was  a  Zouave 
in  another  company,  close  by,  whose  acquaintance 
Surratt,  with  his  chum  Wiechmann,  had  made  three 
years  before  in  a  Maryland  village.  This  recruit, 
Henry  B.  Ste.  Marie  by  name,  also  hailed  from  Amer- 
ica. A  Canadian  by  birth,  he  had  been  engaged  as  a 
teacher  in  a  Washington  college  on  Wiechmann 's  re- 
commendation; afterwards  joined  the  Union  army; 
was  taken  a  prisoner  of  war  to  Richmond,  obtained  his 
liberty  and  made  his  way  oversea  back  to  his  Canadian 
home  just  in  time  to  hear  of  the  assassination.  Alive 
to  the  prospect  of  gaining  a  share  of  the  reward  offered 
by  the  government,  he  proceeded  to  lodge  with  the 
American  consul  at  Montreal  the  particulars  he  pro- 
fessed to  know  concerning  Surratt  and  Wiechmann, 
each  of  whom,  as  he  said,  was  as  guilty  as  the  other. 
Nothing  resulted  from  his  revelation  of  sufficient  im- 
portance to  detain  him  in  his  native  province,  for  the 
next  we  hear  of  him  he  is  serving  in  Italy  as  a  soldier 
of  the  Pope;  exceedingly  anxious,  however,  as  he  ex- 
presses himself,  "to  revisit  his  native  land  and  the 
gray  hair  of  his  father  and  mother."  In  this  state  of 
mind,  the  appearance  of  his  acquaintance,  as  a  comrade 
in  arms  in  a  far  country,  seemed  a  veritable  god-send ; 
and  as  soon  as  he  can  gain  leave  of  absence,  he  hastens 
to  Rome  and  astounds  the  American  minister  in  that 
city  with  the  tidings  that  the  survivor  of  the  murderers 
of  Abraham  Lincoln  is  at  present  in  the  service  of  the 
Papal  States.  At  once,  the  minister — ^^Rufus  King — 
sends  word  to  his  government;  and,  while  waiting  for 


188  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABEAHAM  LINCOLN 

instructions,  is  plied  with  letter  upon  letter  from  the 
border,  in  which  the  impatient  informer  urges  haste, 
pleads  his  own  peril  from  the  friends  of  the  man  he 
is  betraj'ing,  his  need  of  money  and  his  longing  to  do 
justice  to  ''the  ever  lamented  memory  of  President 
Lincoln."  The  authoritative  reminder  that  so  con- 
spicuous a  state-criminal  was  again  within  reach  of 
capture,  coming  at  a  moment  when  the  opponents  of 
the  President  had  secured  a  two-thirds  majority  in 
both  houses  of  Congress,  could  not  be  treated  with 
the  indifference  manifested  towards  a  similar  an- 
nouncement the  previous  fall.  The  minister  at  Rome 
was  instructed  to  obtain  from  Ste.  Marie  a  statement 
of  Surratt's  confession  to  him;  and  after  that  envoy 
had  sent  one  unverified  which  for  that  reason  proved 
unsatisfactory,  he  at  last  succeeded  in  obtaining  an- 
other, signed,  sealed  and  sworn  to  before  the  minister 
himself,  which  concluded  as  follows:  "This  is  the 
exact  truth  of  what  I  know  about  Surratt.  More  I 
could  not  learn,  being  afraid  to  awaken  his  suspicions. 
And  further  I  do  not  say." 

Strange  to  say,  when  armed  with  the  verified  docu- 
ment they  had  declared  indispensable,  the  authorities 
neglected  to  make  any  use  of  it.  Stanton  and  Holt 
fell  back  upon  the  rule  that  the  extradition  of  a  fugitive 
from  justice  was  an  affair  of  the  Department  of  State, 
and  Seward  was  too  busy  in  his  preparations  to  ac- 
company the  President  on  his  famous  tour  through 
the  North  and  West  to  take  up  the  matter.  But  as 
fate  would  have  it,  on  the  very  eve  of  his  departure 
there  came  a  despatch  from  King  announcing  that  if 


TRIAL   OF   JOHN   H.    SURRATT  189 

the  American  government  desired  the  surrender  of 
the  fugitive,  Cardinal  Antonelli  intimated  that  the  lack 
of  an  extradition  treaty  would  not  stand  in  the  way. 
Even  this  unprecedented  overture  failed  to  have  any 
immediate  effect;  and  it  was  not  until  Seward's  return 
in  October  that  King  was  instructed  to  put  the  ques- 
tion to  the  papal  prime  minister  whether  Surratt  would 
be  surrendered  on  presentation  of  an  authenticated 
indictment.  The  cardinal,  for  his  part,  made  no  delay; 
not  only  did  he  answer  in  the  affirmative  but,  without 
waiting  for  any  formal  demand,  he  ordered  the  arrest ; 
and,  in  consequence,  on  the  second  day  of  November, 
1866,  "Zouave  Watson"  was  metamorphosed  from  a 
soldier  into  a  prisoner  of  state.  Early  next  morning, 
as,  "surrounded  by  six  men  as  guards,"  he  was  start- 
ing for  "the  military  prison  at  Rome,"  he  "plunged 
down  into  a  ravine,  more  than  a  hundred  feet  deep, 
which  defended  the  prison"  and  succeeded  in  making 
Ms  escape  across  the  frontier.  On  the  seventeenth,  he 
sailed  from  Naples  in  a  British  steamer  bound  for 
Alexandria,  which  port,  after  stopping  at  Malta,  he 
reached  on  the  twenty-seventh,  and,  the  American 
consul  there  having  been  apprized  of  his  coming,  he 
was  finally  intercepted  and  held  to  await  the  arrival 
of  a  United  States  vessel  to  carry  him  to  this  country.* 
Thus  it  was  that,  after  the  lapse  of  more  than  a 
year  since  the  authorities  were  informed  of  his  where- 
abouts, this  notorious  accomplice  of  Booth  was  fairly 

*  For  these  particulars,  see  letters  and  testimony  transmitted  to  H.  E. 
with  Report  of  Sec.  of  State,  Dec.  16,  1866;  Ex.  Doc.  No.  9,  39th  Cong., 
2d  Sess. 


190  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

thrust  upon  their  hands;  and  against  whom,  now  he 
was  at  length  in  their  power,  they  seemed  at  a  loss 
what  course  to  pursue.  The  leading  radicals  in  Con- 
gress, whose  fiery  zeal  had  not  yet  had  time  to  cool, 
could  account  for  such  lukewarmness  on  no  other 
theory  than  that  the  traitor  sitting  in  the  seat  of 
Lincoln  shrank  from  any  further  search  into  the  cir- 
cumstances attending  the  assassination;  and,  accord- 
ingly, the  House  ordered  the  judiciary  committee  to 
find  out  the  causes  of  such  flagrant  nonfeasance.  And 
it  is  worthy  of  note  that,  from  one  point  of  view,  the 
radicals  were  actually  upon  the  right  scent.  The 
truth  was  that  the  administration  had  been  purposely 
delinquent;  not  so  far  as  the  President  individually 
was  concerned,  who,  as  the  evidence  subsequently 
showed,  was  not  responsible  for  the  delay;  but  in  the 
persons  of  those  very  functionaries  who  were  most 
active  against  this  particular  member  of  the  band 
before  the  military  commission.  Realizing  that  the 
day  of  such  subservient  tribunals  was  over,  and  that 
their  cherished  hypothesis  of  a  Great  Conspiracy 
emanating  from  the  Confederate  government  was  no 
longer  tenable,  they  did  indeed  shrink  from  reviewing 
before  a  jury  of  the  District  of  Columbia  the  trial  of 
Mrs.  Surratt  in  the  person  of  her  son.  Moreover,  aside 
from  this  general  consideration  which  partook  more 
or  less  of  a  sentimental  character,  they  were  haunted 
by  the  uncertainty  thrown  on  the  whereabouts  of  Sur- 
ratt on  the  night  of  the  assassination  by  the  statements 
of  the  two  informers  so  hot  in  pursuit  of  the  reward 
on  his  head.    McMillan,  the  surgeon  of  the  ship  that 


TRIAL    OF   JOHN   H.    SUERATT  191 

carried  the  fugitive  oversea,  made  it  probable  that 
he  was  in  Elmira,  and  an  investigation  provoked  by 
this  statement  showed  that  he  was,  as  matter  of  fact, 
in  that  town ;  while  Ste.  Marie  placed  him  in  New  York 
** prepared  to  fly  when  the  deed  was  done."* 

There  was  no  help  for  it,  however;  the  unwelcome 
exigency  had  to  be  met.  The  United  States  steam 
corvette,  Sivatara,  touched  at  Alexandria  on  the 
twenty-first  of  December,  1866,  and,  thence,  with  its 
one  solitary  iron-bound  captive  for  cargo,  ploughed 
its  slow  way  through  the  Mediterranean  and  across 
the  Atlantic ;  passing  between  the  capes  of  the  Chesa- 
peake on  the  eighteenth  of  February  and,  three  days 
after,  casting  anchor  abreast  of  the  Washington  Navy 
Yard.  There,  in  sight  of  the  prison  in  which  his 
mother  was  tried  and  condemned  and  under  which 
she  lay  buried,  Surratt,  by  order  of  the  Secretary  of 
State,  was  delivered  into  the  hands  of  the  civil  authori- 
ties; the  War  Office  relinquishing  without  a  remon- 
strance the  charge  of  the  prosecution.  Two  weeks 
before,  the  grand  jury  of  the  District  had  found  an 
indictment  for  murder,  and  the  district  attorney  at 
once  began  to  prepare  for  a  trial  which  bade  fair 
to  become  historic. 

At  such  a  juncture  the  Federal  administration  could 
do  no  less  than  back  the  district  attorney;  and  the 
Bureau  of  Military  Justice,  despite  its  misgivings, 
girded  up  its  mighty  loins  for  the  conflict.  There  being 
no  allegation  in  the  indictment  of  Confederate  com- 
plicity, its  spies  and  detectives,  whose  hunting  grounds 

*  See  their  testimony  in  Keport  cited  above. 


192  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

had  been  in  Canada  and  Richmond,  were  functus 
officio  as  witnesses;  but  those  of  them  who  were  out 
of  jail,  and  their  chief,  who  was  in  jail,  placed  their 
skill  and  experience  at  the  service  of  the  prosecution. 
Of  course,  such  an  outrage  as  the  making  evidence 
of  the  horrors  of  Libby  and  Andersonville  was  un- 
thought  of;  but  no  person  sworn  on  behalf  of  the 
government  on  the  other  trial,  whose  testimony  had 
the  remotest  bearing  on  the  guilt  of  the  defendant,  not 
only,  but  on  the  guilt  of  his  mother,  of  Booth,  Payne, 
Atzerodt  and  Herold,  and  who  was  within  reach, 
escaped  being  summoned,  subjected  to  discipline  and 
put  upon  the  stand.  Additional  witnesses — some 
drawn  by  the  hope  of  reward,  some  caught  by  the 
craze  to  take  part  in  so  celebrated  a  cause,  and  many 
whom  even  the  argus-eyed  subpoena- servers  of  the 
Bureau  had  overlooked  on  the  former  occasion,  were 
gathered  in  from  all  points  of  the  compass.  Edwards 
Pierrepont,  a  prominent  member  of  the  New  York 
bar,  distinguished  for  the  plausibility  with  which  he 
could  conceal  the  weak  spots  of  a  popular  but  shaky 
case,*  was  retained  for  the  United  States ;  and  a  judge 
was  found  to  preside  who,  as  was  shown  by  his  course 
during  the  trial,  was  (to  employ  a  phrase  much  in 
vogue  in  that  day)  "organized  to  convict."  A  jury — 
regarded  by  the  advocates  of  courts-martial  and  mili- 
tary commissions  as  an  insurmountable  obstruction 
to  the  course  of  justice  in  such  a  vicinity  as  the  Dis- 
trict of  Columbia— was  obtained,  every  single  member, 

*  Subsequently  attorney  general  under  Grant  and   sent  as  minister 
to  Great  Britain. 


TRIAL   OF   JOHN   H.   SURRATT  193 

of  which  was  agreed  to  by  both  sides;  the  district 
attorney  speaking  of  the  panel  ''as  representatives 
of  the  wealth,  the  intelligence  and  the  commercial 
and  business  character  of  the  community;  gentlemen 
against  whose  character  there  cannot  be  a  whisper 
of  suspicion." 

The  trial  opened  on  the  tenth  of  June,  1867,  and 
the  first  week  was  taken  up  in  arguing  a  challenge  by 
the  United  States  to  the  array,  which,  if  successful, 
would  have  postponed  the  cause  until  the  next  fall; 
and  by  the  examination  of  the  jurors.  It  was  during 
this  interval  that  Pierrepont  saw  fit  to  give  notice  that 
''the  public  mind  would  be  set  right  with  regard  to  a 
great  many  subjects  about  which  there  have  been  such 
active  and  numerous  reports  and  innuendoes,"  among 
the  rest,  "that  the  United  States  dared  not  bring 
forward  the  diary  found  upon  the  murderer  of  the 
President  because  that  diary  would  prove  things  they 
did  not  want  to  have  known." 

When,  on  Monday,  the  seventeenth,  the  assistant 
district  attorney  was  about  to  open  the  case,  the  scene 
in  the  court  room  afforded  a  speaking  contrast  to  the 
corresponding  scene  before  the  military  commission. 
The  court  was  not  held  within  the  walls  of  a  prison 
guarded  at  all  points  by  soldiers;  and  the  unpreten- 
tious court  house,  standing  in  its  peaceful  square,  with 
its  doors  and  windows  open,  when  compared  with  the 
Old  Penitentiary  pervaded  by  scarcely  suppressed  pas- 
sion and  undisguised  thirst  for  blood,  seemed  the  very 
sanctuary  of  even-handed  justice.  As  the  prisoner 
entered  and  advanced  to  the  bar,  no  clank  of  fetters 

13 


194  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

jarred  upon  the  ear:  and,  as  he  sat  at  his  ease  by  the 
side  of  his  counsel  like  a  citizen  the  law  presumes  to 
be  innocent  until  proved  guilty,  the  memory  of  that 
group  of  culprits  loaded  down  with  irons  as  they 
crouched  before  their  imperious  doomsmen  served  to 
consecrate  anew  the  benignity  of  the  common  law  of 
peace  in  contradistinction  to  the  barbarity  of  the  com- 
mon law  of  war.  One  overmastering  impression  there 
was.  moreover,  striking  awe  into  the  heart  of  the  most 
indifferent  spectator.  All  felt  that  the  woman  who 
had  suffered  the  extreme  penalty  of  the  law  two  years 
before  was  again  on  trial  with  her  son,  and,  as  the 
defendant  stood  in  the  flesh  with  upraised  hand  to 
answer  to  the  indictment,  the  ghost  of  his  mother 
seemed  to  hover  above  his  head,  echoing  with  shadowv 
lips  the  plea  of  not  guilty,  with  the  feeble  repetition 
of  which  she  had  tottered  to  the  scaffold. 

The  prosecution  was  fully  alive  to  the  fearful  alter- 
native with  which  it  was  confronted.  Though  a  con- 
viction, it  was  likely,  would  condone  the  judgment  of 
the  military  commission  notwithstanding  its  legal  in- 
validity, an  acquittal  or  even  a  failure  to  convict  would 
brand  the  execution  of  its  sentence  upon  the  mother 
of  the  defendant  as  nothing  short  of  judicial  murder 
under  military  rule.  In  the  presence  of  such  a  tre- 
mendous issue — as  inexorable  as  the  riddle  of  the 
sphinx — the  prosecuting  officers  dared  not  forego  a 
single  branch  or  phase  of  their  case,  no  matter  how  in- 
compatible, one  with  another,  they  might  have  become. 
For  instance,  the  testimony  taken  before  the  commis- 
sion implicating  Surratt  with  the  conspirators  before 


TEIAL    OF   JOHN   H.    SUEEATT  195 

that  tribunal  tended  to  demonstrate  the  existence  of 
a  plot  to  capture  as  contradistinguished  from  a  plot 
to  kill ;  yet,  although  the  names  of  Arnold,  0  'Laughlin, 
Spangler  and  Mudd  did  not  appear  in  the  present 
indictment  and  the  prosecution  was  pledged  to  produce 
the  diary  of  Booth,  they  refused  to  recognize  the 
existence  of  the  former  plot  and  followed  the  judge 
advocates  in  blending  the  two — a  course  rendered  much 
more  difficult,  if  not  wholly  out  of  question,  by  the 
explosion  of  the  charge  of  complicity  on  the  part  of 
the  Confederate  government.  And  in  this  course  they 
stubbornly  persisted  after  they  had  come  to  the  deter- 
mination, despite  of  convincing  evidence  to  the  contrary 
in  their  own  possession,  to  hinge  their  whole  case  uix)n 
the  presence  of  the  prisoner  in  Washington  on  the 
fatal  night.  The  blending  of  the  two  plots  was  not 
necessary  to  convict  a  conspirator  like  Payne  or 
Atzerodt  whose  presence  on  the  scene  of  action  was 
undisputed;  this  device  was  originally  resorted  to 
bring  within  the  compass  of  the  charge  parties  at  a 
distance,  especially  the  authorities  at  Eichmond.  The 
presence  of  Surratt  in  TVashington  once  established, 
to  resort  to  the  tactics  of  the  Bureau  in  the  matter  of 
the  Great  Conspiracy  was  a  mere  work  of  supereroga- 
tion. The  truth  is  that,  oppressed  by  the  magnitude 
of  their  task  and  the  alamiins:  uncertain tv  of  the  re- 

* —  » 

suit,  they  had  not  sufficient  confidence  in  the  strength 
of  either  branch  of  their  case  to  dispense  with  the  aid 
of  the  other.  Both  must  be  utilized  for  all  they  were 
worth.    One  might  be  sufficient  for  the  conviction  of 


196  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

the  son  but  the  other  was  necessary  to  uphold  the  con- 
viction of  the  mother. 

Accordingly,  they  lavished  their  resources,  exhaust- 
ed their  energies  and  distracted  their  aim  by  pushing 
to  the  front  two  independent  lines  of  proof,  the  sub- 
stantiation of  either  of  which  was  all-sufficient  for 
every  legitimate  purpose;  and,  in  consequence,  like  a 
person  attempting  to  ride  two  horses  at  once,  they 
fell  between  the  two.  The  assistant  district  attorney 
stated  in  his  opening  address:  "On  the  Monday  be- 
fore the  assassination,  Surratt  received  a  summons 
from  his  co-conspirator.  Booth,  requiring  his  immedi- 
ate presence  in  this  city.  In  obedience  to  that  precon- 
certed signal  he  at  once  left  Canada  and  arrived  here 
on  the  thirteenth.  By  numerous,  I  had  almost  said  a 
multitude  of  witnesses,  we  shall  make  the  proof  to  be 
as  clear  as  the  noon-day  sun,  and  as  convincing  as  the 
axioms  of  truth,  that  he  was  here  during  the  day  of 
that  fatal  Friday,  as  well  as  present  at  the  theatre  at 
night.  We  shall  show  him  to  you  on  Pennsylvania 
Avenue  booted  and  spurred,  awaiting  the  arrival  of 
the  fatal  moment.  We  shall  show  him  in  conference 
with  Herold  in  the  evening;  we  shall  show  him  pur- 
chasing a  contrivance  for  disguise  an  hour  or  two 
before  the  murder."  Such  being  the  case,  there  was, 
surely,  no  necessity  for  another  attempt  to  prove  a 
series  of  allegations  which  the  Conspiracy  Trial  left 
doubtful  and  subsequent  developments  showed  to  be 
unmaintainable;  allegations  which  the  assistant  dis- 
trict attorney  restated  as  follows:  ''The  butchery  that 
ensued  was  the  ripe  result  of  a  long-premediated  plot, 


TRIAL    OF   JOHN   H.    SURRATT  197 

in  which  the  prisoner  was  the  chief  conspirator";  "he 
made  his  home  in  this  city  the  rendezvous  for  the  tools 
and  agents  in  what  he  called  his  'bloody  work';  and 
his  hand  provided  .  .  .  the  very  weapons  .  .  .  one  of 
which  fell  from  Booth's  death-grip  at  the  moment  of 
his  capture."  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  diary  they 
themselves  put  in  evidence  pointed  unmistakably  to 
the  "six  months'  work  to  capture"  and  the  sudden 
inception  of  the  design  "to  kill";  and  their  star- 
witness  Wiechmann  placed  the  collapse  of  the  former 
at  least  three  weeks  before  the  development  of  the 
latter.  Yet  they  strenuously  contended  that  the  work 
to  capture  and  the  design  to  kill  were  but  parts  of  one 
conspiracy  set  on  foot  in  the  summer  of  1863.  Beside 
the  mass  of  testimony  adduced  on  the  other  trial,  they 
further  enriched  the  literature  of  the  subject  by  bring- 
ing forward  two  witnesses : — one  a  druggist  in  whose 
employ  during  the  summer  of  the  last-mentioned 
year,  Herold  charged  the  President  on  the  books  of 
the  shop  with  "a  small  vial  of  castor  oil,"  to  show 
that  "poison"  was  then  contemplated;*  the  other,  a 
woman  who  in  April,  1864,  overheard  three  men  talk- 
ing on  a  street  corner  in  Washington  about  killing 
the  President  with  "a  telescopic  rifle. "f  Two  of  the 
men  she  fancied  she  recognized  among  the  prisoners 
at  the  Conspiracy  Trial,  though  she  did  not  report 
them  to  the  authorities,  and  the  third  she  had  since 
become  convinced  was  John  Wilkes  Booth  whom  she 
had  seen  on  the  stage.  The  "Selby"  letter  was  again 
made  use  of,  this  time,  not  as  written  to  Booth  by  some 

*  See  Note  III  to  Chap.  I  in  Appendix;  S.  T.,  510,  517. 
t  S.  T.,  365. 


19S  ASSASSrS'ATIOX  OF  ABRAHAM  LIXCOLN 

person  imkQO'^m.  but  as  written  hi/  Booth  in  a  dis- 
gnised  hand  to  lure  Payne  from  that  imaginary  being 
— his  broken-hearted  wife.*  They  followed  Booth  and 
Surratt  to  the  capitol  on  the  evening  of  the  second 
inauguration:  Surratt  riding  during  the  next  day  in 
the  rear  of  the  procession,  and  both  of  them  at  Mrs. 
Surratt 's  in  the  evening:  but  there  was  no  attempt  to 
prove  that  Booth,  in  trying  to  force  his  way  through 
the  crowd  in  the  rotunda  on  that  occasion,  was  ar- 
rested ;  the  policeman  who,  it  was  said,  was  the  hero  of 
such  an  achievement  and  promoted  for  his  heroism, 
not  being  produced  as  a  witness.! 

It  is  not  our  purpose  to  dwell  upon  this  branch  of 
the  case,  which  in  one  sense  has  grown  obsolete;  but 
something  must  be  said  upon  that  portion  of  the  testi- 
mony on  this  trial  which  bore  directly  upon  Mrs. 
Surratt.  Of  course,  the  two  witnesses  who  turned 
state 's-evidence  reappeared.  Lloyd  manifested  a  su- 
perstitious reluctance  to  speak  of  the  woman  whom  he 
had  been  instrumental  in  sending  to  a  felon's  grave; 
but  he  was  forced  to  repeat  his  former  testimony: — 
his  cross-examination,  however,  bringing  into  stronger 
light  the  gross  intoxication  that  rendered  his  evidence 
unreliable  at  the  points  where  it  was  calculated  to  be 
most  deadly.  "Wiechmann  came  also ;  a  spruce,  dapper 
figure,  careful  to  remind  the  audience  that  his  name 
originally  was  spelled  "Wie"  instead  of  *'Wei,"  as 
the  reporters  would  have  it  at  the  other  trial  and  as 
he  thought  proper  to  spell  it  since.    After  his  perfor- 

*Se«  Chap.  I,  Note  HI;  S.  T.,  365,  130.5-6. 
t  Note  to  Chap.  II  in  Appendix;  S.  T.,  379. 


TEIAL    OF   JOHN   H.    SUEEATT  199 

mance  on  that  occasion,  which  in  some  respects  was 
not  satisfactory  to  the  jndge  advocate,  and  before  the 
execution  of  the  condemned,  he  made  overtrires  to  the 
friends  of  his  dead  benefactress,  pleading  duress ;  bnt, 
being  met  with  loathing  by  every  monmer  of  his 
victim,  he  tamed  back  to  the  government,  his  jwsition 
mider  which  he  had  forfeited.  On  the  eleventh  day  of 
Angnst,  1S65.  he  sent  to  Colonel  Bnmett.  at  Cincinnati, 
his  own  affidavit :  containing,  as  he  informs  that  officer, 
*' facts  which  have  come  to  my  knowledge  since  the 
rendition  of  my  testimony."  In  this  paper,  he  pnts 
into  the  month  of  the  woman,  executed  but  little  over  a 
month  ago.  remarks  made  in  the  confidence  of  domes- 
tic intercourse  in<iicative  of  her  sympathy  with  the 
Southern  cause  which  she  had  every  reason  to  believe 
her  favorite  boarder  shared,  and  embellishes  his  for- 
mer narrative  of  their  drive  to  Surrattsville  on  the 
fatal  Friday  with  a  few  poisonous  details :  among  the 
rest,  identifying  the  caller  on  their  return,  whose  foot- 
steps, in  his  former  testimony,  he  said  he  heard  over- 
head, but  whom  he  did  not  see,  as  Booth.*  For  this 
service  he  was  rewarded  by  an  appointment  in  the 
Philadelphia  customhouse,  which,  owing  to  the  rupture 
between  President  and  Congress,  he  enjoyed  but  little 
over  a  year.  When  the  extradition  of  his  former 
room-mate  made  another  trial  inevitable,  he  began 
preparing  himself  to  face  an  ordeal  where  ex  parte 
affidavits  would  not  pass  muster.  The  official  report 
of  the  ''Trial  of  the  Assassins.*'  he  carefully  studied; 
copied  his  own  testimony :  collated  it  with  his  affidavit ; 

*  Note  I  to  this  chapter  in  Appaidix. 


200  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABEAHAM  LINCOLN 

and  produced  a  revised  version  which  he  handed  to 
the  district  attorney  before  going  as  a  witness  before 
the  grand  jury.  After  the  indictment  was  found,  be- 
lieving, as  he  said,  that  his  ''character  was  at  stake 
in  this  issue,"  intending  to  do  all  he  could  "to  aid 
the  prosecution,"  ''hunted  and  prosecuted,"  as  he 
charged  he  was,  by  the  relatives  and  friends  of  his 
victim,  he  sat  down  to  make  another  study  of  Pitman's 
book,  comparing  it  with  a  Boston  record  of  the  trial, 
touching  and  retouching  the  revised  version,  correct- 
ing errors  in  dates,  raising  innuendoes  into  positive 
averments,  straightening  the  logical  sequences,  and 
decorating  the  whole  with  a  few  damning  details  un- 
heard of  before.* 

For  all  his  self-possession  and  careful  study,  the 
witness  did  not  escape  so  easily  as  upon  the  former 
trial.  Where  third  parties  happened  to  be  present, 
the  defence  was  able  to  contradict  him  on  several 
material  points.  His  looseness  in  dates,  though  he 
strove  hard  to  correct  such  discrepancies,  was  made 
apparent.  His  intense  anxiety  to  help  on  a  conviction 
as  a  vindication  of  his  turning  against  the  mother  of 
the  prisoner  was  painfully  visible  in  his  demeanor 
and  audible  in  every  word  he  spoke;  and  the  more 
important  of  the  details  contained  in  his  affida\at  and 
those  first  disclosed  in  his  present  testimony  were 
shown  to  be  false. 

One  other  circumstance  which,  as  we  have  already 
stated,  has  been  cited  by  writers  on  the  subject  ever 
since  the  Conspiracy  Trial  as  strong  evidence  of  the 

*  Note  II  to  chapter  in  Appendis. 


TRIAL   OF   JOHN   H.    SURRATT         201 

guilt  of  Mrs.  Surratt  must  be  adverted  to.  Her  non- 
recognition  of  Payne  on  the  night  of  the  arrest  of  that 
conspirator  at  her  house  was  gone  over  in  much  more 
elaborate  detail  than  on  her  own  trial;  a  diagram  of 
the  hall,  showing  the  relative  positions  of  the  parties 
to  the  scene  being  made  a  part  of  the  evidence.  The 
same  witnesses  were  called — the  two  leaders  of  the 
expedition  still  vicing  with  each  other  in  setting  them- 
selves right  in  the  eyes  of  their  superiors.  Major 
Smith  laid  on  the  colors  and  deepened  the  shades  of 
his  dramatic  recital  before  the  military  commission; 
and  Colonel  Morgan  tried  his  utmost  to  tone  down  his 
point-blank  contradictions  of  his  rival  on  the  same 
occasion.  His  efforts  were  vain,  however;  the  sole 
result  being  a  demonstration  of  the  unreliability  of 
the  testimony  of  detective  ofScers  employed  by  the 
government  in  cases  where  large  rewards  are  at  stake 
and  the  government  deeply  interested  in  the  establish- 
ment of  its  side  of  the  issue.  Moreover,  as  was  pointed 
out  on  the  former  trial,  there  were  subordinates  pre- 
sent whose  testimony  might  have  cleared  away  the 
chaos,  and  not  one  of  them  was  sworn.* 

Leaving  this  branch  of  the  case,  we  come  to  what 
was  after  all  the  real  gist  of  the  contention  on  the 
Surratt  Trial.  Without  satisfactory  evidence  that  the 
prisoner  was  present  in  Washington  on  the  night  of 
the  assassination,  the  prosecuting  officers  were  aware 
that  they  could  gain  no  hold  on  the  jury.  Indeed, 
nothing  short  of  the  certitude  that  there  was  no  other 

*  See  Note  III  in  Appendix  to  Chap.  III. 


202  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABEAHAM  LINCOLN 

way  open  leading  to  a  conviction  conld  have  driven 
them  to  enter  upon  so  hopeless  an  undertaking. 

In  the  first  place,  that  the  prisoner  was  absent  from 
the  scene  of  the  crime  was  clear  from  the  evidence  on 
the  Conspiracy  Trial,  and  at  that  date  but  a  single 
witness  could  be  ferreted  out  who  testified  that  he  saw 
Surratt  at  about  three  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  on 
Pennsylvania  Avenue.  Before  this  hour  or  after, 
not  another  human  being  had  laid  eyes  on  him ;  not  an 
acquaintance,  not  an  inmate  of  his  household,  not 
even  Wiechmann,  since  the  fourth  of  April.  In  the 
second  place,  as  we  have  already  intimated,  they  had 
in  their  possession  strong  affirmative  testimony  that 
on  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  he  was  either  far 
away  in  the  interior  of  the  state  of  New  York,  or,  at 
the  nearest,  in  its  metropolitan  city.  Yet,  they  had 
the  hardihood  to  instruct  the  assistant  district  attorney 
in  opening  the  case  to  make  the  sweeping  declaration 
quoted  above.  And  the  number  of  persons  that  they 
were  able  to  corral,  prepared  to  testify  as  they  desired, 
is  absolutely  astounding.  In  addition  to  the  single 
witness  of  the  Conspiracy  Trial,  the  district  attorney 
called  thirteen.  Of  these  three  were  witnesses  on  the 
former  trial: — Lee,  sworn  against  Atzerodt;  Cleaver, 
the  liveryman  at  whose  stables  Booth  and  Surratt 
hired  and  kept  horses ;  and  Dye,  sworn  against  Spang- 
ler;  none  of  whom  was  interrogated  anent  Surratt 
nor  volunteered  mention  of  his  presence.  On  the  pres- 
ent occasion,  however,  Lee  testified  that,  about  three 
o'clock  in  the  afternoon  of  the  fourteenth,  he  passed 
a  man  on  the  avenue  "whom  he  took  to  be  Surratt"; 


TRIAL   OF   JOHN   H.   SUERATT         203 

Cleaver,  that,  a  little  after  four,  he  on  horseback  met 
Surratt  on  horseback  and  spoke  to  him;  Dye  was 
able  to  identify  the  stranger  who,  he  swore  in  his  for- 
mer testimony,  called  out  the  hour  in  the  front  of  the 
theatre,  as  Surratt,  because  as  he  said  ''that  face" 
had  appeared  in  his  dreams  for  the  past  two  years — 
**so  exceedingly  pale."  Of  the  ten  witnesses  sworn 
for  the  first  time,  six  were  not  positive.  Cooper,  a 
comrade  of  Dye's,  not  having  seen  the  face  that  so 
haunted  his  companion,  did  little  to  corroborate  him ; 
Grillo,  who  kept  a  restaurant  adjoining  the  theatre, 
* '  believed, ' '  but  could  not  say  he  knew,  the  young  man 
he  saw  at  Willard's  Hotel  in  the  afternoon  to  be  the 
prisoner;  Coleman  and  Cushman,  two  officers  of  the 
Treasury,  saw  Booth  on  horeback  at  about  six  o'clock 
in  the  evening  talking  earnestly  to  a  man  standing 
on  the  sidewalk  of  Pennsylvania  Avenue,  who,  the 
former  swore,  ''looked  like"  the  prisoner  and  the 
latter,  that  he  "did  not  resemble"  him  "very  much"; 
Heaton,  a  clerk  in  the  land  office,  on  first  coming  into 
the  court  room  discovered  "a  very  distinct  resem- 
blance" between  the  face  of  the  prisoner  and  a  face 
which  had  attracted  his  attention  in  front  of  the  theatre 
more  than  two  years  before ;  and  Ramsel,  a  soldier  in 
the  war,  who,  between  four  and  five  o'clock  on  the 
morning  of  Saturday,  the  fifteenth,  saw  a  horseman 
riding  towards  the  pickets  on  the  Bladensburg  road, 
whose  back  was  in  the  opinion  of  the  witness  the  back 
of  the  prisoner. 

The  four  witnesses  remaining,  though  none  of  them 
had  ever  seen  Surratt  until  summoned  for  this  trial, 


204  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

were  positive  in  tlieir  identification.  Wood,  a  colored 
barber,  testified  that,  at  about  nine  o  'clock  in  the  morn- 
ing. Booth  came  into  the  shop  where  the  witness  was 
at  work,  accompanied  by  three  strangers,  one  of  whom 
he — first  trimming  Booth's  hair — shaved  "clean  all 
aronnd  his  face  with  the  exception  of  where  the  mus- 
tache was,"  and  whom  he  now  recognized  as  the  pris- 
oner. Rhodes,  a  mender  of  clocks,  testified  that,  near 
noon,  he  strolled  into  Ford's  theatre,  walked  up  into 
the  dress  circle,  noticed  that  the  curtain  was  down, 
saw  a  man  fitting  a  piece  of  wood  to  obstruct  entrance 
from  the  audience  into  the  passageway  behind  the 
private  boxes,  who  told  him  that  the  President  was 
to  be  there  that  night  and  they  were  busy  ' '  arranging 
it  so  that  he  won't  be  disturbed."  This  man,  the  wit- 
ness had  no  doubt,  was  Surratt.  Vanderpool,  a  New 
York  lawyer,  who  served  in  the  war  and  happened 
to  be  in  Washington  on  the  eventful  day  as  a  paroled 
prisoner,  testified  that  in  the  afternoon  he  saw  Booth 
and  two  or  three  others  sitting  at  a  round  table  in  a 
hall  on  the  avenue  where  were  fifty  or  sixty  persons 
listening  to  music  and  watching  a  woman  dancing; 
and  one  of  them  was  Surratt.  These  three  witnesses, 
although  like  the  rest  of  the  community  they  must 
have  followed  the  proceedings  of  the  former  trial  with 
the  deepest  interest,  first  put  themselves  into  com- 
munication with  the  authorities  after  the  present  trial 
had  commenced.  To  this  criticism,  however,  the  fourth 
witness  was  not  obnoxious.  She  was  a  colored  servant 
of  Mrs.  Surratt 's,  first  coming  to  her  house  in  the 
month  of  March,  1865,  after  her  son  had  gone  to  Rich- 


TRIAL   OF   JOHN   H    SURRATT         205 

mond.  She  was  arrested,  with  the  other  inmates,  and 
was  subjected  to  an  examination  at  General  Augur's 
headquarters — her  answers  being  taken  down  in  writ- 
ing. She  now  testified  that  between  eight  and  nine 
o  'clock  on  the  Friday  night  in  question,  going  into  the 
dining  room  with  a  pot  of  tea,  she  saw  a  young  man 
there  whom  Mrs.  Surratt  told  her  was  her  son  John^ 
a  statement  which  she,  also,  swore  she  made  on  her 
examination  just  after  her  arrest. 

One  other  witness  there  was,  whose  testimony  took 
the  shape  of  a  confession  of  the  prisoner.  The  two 
Canadians,  who  put  the  authorities  on  the  track  of 
the  prisoner  in  Europe,  had  been  haunting  the  capital 
for  months;  the  liberal  rewards  pending  being  the 
governing  motive  of  their  zeal.  McMillan,  the  surgeon 
of  the  steamer  in  which  Surratt  crossed  the  ocean, 
though  doing  all  the  damage  to  the  prisoner  in  his 
power,  could  not,  in  view  of  his  affidavit  made  before 
the  American  consul  at  Liverpool,  venture  to  put 
words  into  the  prisoner's  mouth  placing  him  in  Wash- 
ington. Ste.  Marie,  on  the  other  hand,  seemed  to  have 
forgotten  the  averment  in  his  deposition  that  Surratt 
told  him  "he  was  in  New  York  when  the  event  took 
place'*;  the  remembrance  of  which  by  the  prosecuting 
officers  may  explain  why,  when  the  witness  took  the 
stand,  they  guided  him  as  follows: 

"Q.  Did  the  prisoner  tell  you  anything  about  his  dis- 
guises? A.  Yes,  sir.  I  asked  him  how  he  got  out  of  Wash- 
ington ;  if  he  had  a  hard  time  in  escaping.  He  said  he  had  a 
very  hard  time. 


206  ASSASSIXATTOX  OF  ABRAHAM  LIXCOLN 

"Q.  How  did  he  say  he  got  out  of  Washington?  A.  He 
told  me  he  left  that  night. 

"Q.  TThat  night?  A.  The  night  of  the  assassination  or 
the  next  morning,  I  am  not  positive." 

The  counsel  for  the  prisoner  not  being  aware  of  the 
affidavit,  the  witness  escaped  cross-examination.* 

A  truly  formidable  array  this ;  furnishing  a  striking 
illustration  of  the  coercive  power  of  a  place  in  the 
service  of  the  government  over  the  mind  of  its  holder, 
when  questions,  in  which  the  government  is  deeply 
interested,  are  at  stake,  and  of  the  magnetism  a  cele- 
brated trial  exerts  over  persons  rabid  for  notoriety 
and  persons  on  the  watch  for  prey.  But  formidable 
as  it  was,  the  defence  was  able  to  meet  it  witness  by 
witness.  Lee  was  conclusively  impeached;  among  a 
host  of  other  witnesses,  the  provost-marshal,  whose 
chief  detective  he  once  was,  pronounced  his  reputation 
for  truth  and  veracity  bad.  Cleaver,  also,  was  im- 
peached ;  and  he  acknowledged  on  the  stand  that,  while 
lying  in  jail  under  a  conviction  for  a  shameful  crime, 
he  was  persuaded  by  Conover  to  peach  on  the  prisoner 
whom  hitherto  he  was  inclined  to  shield.  The  phantom 
of  Dye's  dream  was  dispelled  by  the  introduction  in  the 
flesh  of  the  very  man  who  called  out  the  hour.  The 
friend  Booth  was  seen  earnestlv  talking  to  on  the  ave- 
nue  was  shown  to  be  Matthews,  his  fellow-actor  to 
whom  he  delivered  the  article  to  be  .given  to  the  press. 
The  scene  in  the  dining  room  of  the  Surratt  house  when 

*  See  affidavit  of  Ste.  Marie,  Ex.  Doe.  Xo.  36,  40th  Cong.,  2  Sess.  in 
report.  Act  for  payment  of  his  reward  in  Appendix  to  Globe  of  that 
association,  p.  602. 


TEIAL    OF   JOHN   H.    SUERATT  207 

Snsan  Ann  Jackson  first  saw  her  mistress'  son  was 
proved  to  have  occurred,  not  on  the  night  of  the  four- 
teenth, but  on  the  night  of  the  third  of  April,  when  Sur- 
ratt  passed  through  Washington  on  his  way  from 
Eichmond  to  Montreal ;  the  change  of  date  clearing  up 
the  mystery  of  the  colored  girl's  nonproduction  on  the 
Conspiracy  Trial.  "Wood,  the  barber,  was  shown  to 
have  been  mistaken  in  identifying  O'Laughlin  as  one  of 
the  parties  coming  into  the  shop,  and  it  appeared  that 
the  man  he  shaved  clean  around  could  not  have  been  the 
prisoner,  who  wore  a  goatee.  Ehodes'  strange  story 
was  shown  to  be  a  fable  by  proof  that  the  door  leading 
from  the  vestibule  to  the  dress  circle  of  the  theatre 
was  always  kept  locked  in  the  daytime;  that,  at  the 
hour  the  witness  swore  he  entered,  the  curtain  was  up 
and  a  rehearsal  going  on,  and  that  the  fixing  up  of  the 
private  box  did  not  begin  until  the  rehearsal  was  over. 
Yanderpool's  equally  improbable  tale  was  refuted  by 
proof  that  there  was  no  afternoon  performance  in  the 
hall  and  no  round  table  on  the  premises.  The  identi- 
fications of  the  other  four  witnesses  were  so  indefinite 
as,  in  the  opinion  of  the  counsel  for  the  defendant, 
to  call  for  no  ex[3licit  refutation. 

By  a  marvellous  coincidence,  in  which  the  trial 
seemed  to  abound,*  a  handkerchief,  marked  *'J.  H. 
Surratt  Xo.  2,"  which  the  prosecution  proved  was 
dropped  in  the  railroad  station  at  Burlington,  pre- 
sumably by  the  prisoner,  on  his  flight  from  Washing- 
ton, was  proved  to  have  been  taken  by  mistake  by 
Holahan,  the  boarder  at  the  house  in  H  Street,  who 

*  Note  m  to  this  chapter  in  Appendix. 


208  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABEAHAM  LINCOLN 

with  Wiechmann  was  drafted  by  the  officers  starting 
for  Canada  in  pursuit  of  Surratt. 

Such  was  the  serious  inroad  made  by  the  defence 
on  the  formidable  array  marshaled  by  the  United 
States.  But  this  by  no  means  constituted  the  whole 
of  the  counter-attack.  They  established  an  alibi  as 
conclusive  as  ever  was  interposed  in  a  court  of  justice. 
That  the  counsel  for  the  government,  when  it  came  to 
close  quarters,  were  prejDared,  from  evidence  in  their 
own  possession,  to  concede  that  the  prisoner  was  at 
Elmira  the  day  before  the  assassination,  was  sedu- 
lously concealed  during  the  presentation  of  their  side 
of  the  case,  and,  of  course,  was  undreamed  of  by  the 
counsel  for  the  defence.  Guided  by  information  secured 
from  the  prisoner,  the  Messrs.  Bradley,  his  counsel, 
had  set  on  foot  a  ''careful,  painstaking  investigation 
extending  over  a  period  of  many  weeks,"  tracing  his 
whereabouts  from  his  departure  from  Montreal  until 
Ms  return,  ascertaining  the  nature  of  his  errand,  inter- 
viewing the  persons  he  had  met,  visiting  the  hotels  he 
had  stopped  at ;  and  they  were  rewarded  by  the  verifi- 
cation of  their  client's  story  in  every  particular.  The 
Confederate  general  Edwin  G.  Lee,  who  happened  to 
be  in  Montreal  at  the  date  in  question  on  sick  furlough, 
was  put  upon  the  stand  to  prove  the  object  of  the 
prisoner's  errand  to  Elmira  and  that  he  made  a  report 
to  the  witness  on  his  return;  but  the  testimony  was 
excluded.  His  presence  in  that  town,  however,  was 
proved  by  four  residents  of  unblemished  character  and 
exceptionable  loyalty,  and  wholly  disinterested;  two 
of  them  testifying  that  they  saw  and  conversed  with 


TRIAL   OF   JOHN   H.   SURRATT         209 

him,  on  either  the  thirteenth  or  the  fourteenth  of 
April,  1865,  in  the  afternoon;  the  third,  that  he  saw 
and  conversed  with  him  on  both  the  thirteenth  and 
fourteenth ;  and  the  fourth,  that  he  held  a  protracted 
interview  with  him  on  the  morning  of  the  fifteenth,  at 
about  nine  o  'clock,  just  after  the  news  of  the  death  of 
the  President  arrived.  Their  identification  was  posi- 
tive and  circumstantial,  even  to  the  Garibaldi  jacket  the 
prisoner  wore,  which,  it  was  proved,  was  made  for  him 
by  a  tailor  in  Montreal  just  before  he  started  on  his 
trip.  The  register  of  the  Brainard  House  of  the  date 
in  question,  though  searched  for  high  and  low,  could 
not  be  found;  but  the  counsel,  at  the  last  moment, 
struck  the  track  of  a  ''man  upon  crutches,"  whom 
their  client  told  them  he  had  conversed  with  at  that 
hotel ;  and  summoned  him  by  telegram  from  New  York. 
The  man  came  and  testified  that,  being  in  Elmira  on 
the  fourteenth  in  search  of  a  witness  in  his  suit  for 
injuries  inflicted  by  an  accident  on  the  Erie  Railroad, 
he  saw  and  conversed  with  the  prisoner  at  the  Brain- 
ard House;  but  the  reputation  of  this  witness  for 
truth  and  veracity  was  seriously  impeached,  and  the 
defendant's  counsel  contented  themselves  with  point- 
ing out  the  absence  of  any  conceivable  motive  for  this 
stranger  to  commit  perjury.  They  had  somewhat 
better  luck  with  the  register  of  the  Webster  House  at 
Canadaigua,  where  Surratt  stopped  on  his  way  back, 
which  they  found  and  produced  in  court.  Under  the 
date  of  Saturday,  April  15th,  1865,  appeared  the  name 
of  "John  Harrison,"  proved  to  be  in  the  handwriting 
of  the  prisoner.    But  the  book  having  been  out  of  use 

14 


210  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

since  the  end  of  that  year,  and  the  defence  being 
unable  to  show  the  presence  of  the  prisoner  when  the 
entry  was  made,  the  judge  excluded  the  evidence  with 
the  remark:  "The  name  could  as  well  have  been 
written  by  him  in  Canada,  or  Rome,  or  Egypt,  as  in 
Canandaigua.  The  book  has  been  at  the  mercy  of 
anybody  for  more  than  two  years.  It  could  have  gone 
to  Canada  and  back  a  hundred  times ;  or  the  prisoner, 
during  his  stay  there  in  Canada,  could  have  gone  to 
the  book  just  as  often."* 

Nevertheless,  unfortunate  as  they  were  with  respect 
to  the  two  registers,  the  admission  of  either  of  which 
would  have  settled  the  question,  the  testimony  actually 
admitted  was  strong  enough  to  force  the  counsel  on 
the  other  side  to  play  a  card  which  hitherto  they  had 
held  up  their  sleeve  in  view  of  this  very  exigency. 
Their  direct  testimony  left  it  to  be  inferred  that 
Surratt  traveled  from  Montreal  straight  through  by 
the  usual  route  to  Washington.  But,  when  testimony 
for  the  defendant  which  they  could  not  contradict  and 
knew  to  be  in  accordance  with  the  facts,  made  it  clear 
that  he  deviated  so  far  as  to  fetch  up  at  Elmira,  they 
seized  upon  the  alternative  date  given  by  two  of  the 
witnesses  for  the  defence,  magnamiously  conceded  his 
presence  in  Elmira  on  the  morning  of  Thursday,  the 
thirteenth,  and  undertook  the  herculean  labor  of  trans- 
porting him  over  the  three  hundred  miles  between 
Elmira  and  Washington  within  twenty-four  hours. 

In  the  execution  of  this  flank  movement,  however, 
they  encountered  obstacles  that  in  an  ordinary  case 

*  See  Note  IV  to  this  chapter  in  Appendix. 


TRIAL    OF   JOHN   H.    SUREATT  211 

would  have  been  at  once  pronounced  insurmountable. 
In  the  first  place,  they  were  obliged  to  do  away  with 
the  testimony  of  two  other  witnesses  for  the  defence 
of  equal  credibility,  one  of  whom  was  positive  that  he 
met  the  defendant  on  the  fourteenth  as  well  as  the 
thirteenth,  and  the  other  that  he  met  him  on  the  fif- 
teenth ;  and  this  they  did  by  insisting  that  the  former 
was  mistaken  as  to  the  fourteenth  and  by  ignoring  the 
evidence  of  the  latter  altogether.  In  the  next  place, 
they  themselves  had  proved  that  the  prisoner  left 
Montreal  on  the  twelfth  by  the  three  o'clock  New  York 
train,  and  it  was  uncontroverted  that  a  passenger  by 
that  train  could  not  have  reached  Elmira  before  the 
evening  of  the  thirteenth  (unless  he  had  been  a  "bird," 
as  Bradley  said) ;  an  hour  so  late  that  it  was  physically 
impossible  to  get  to  Washington  by  the  next  morning. 
This  difficulty  the  senior  counsel  for  the  United  States 
met  in  characteristic  fashion.  He  astonished  every 
hearer  by  pointing  out  that  his  own  witness,  on  testi- 
fying that  the  prisoner  left  Montreal  by  the  three 
o'clock  train,  omitted  to  specify  whether  it  was  three 
o'clock  A.M.  or  three  o'clock  p.m. — supplementing  this 
obvious  afterthought  by  the  following  declaration 
which  may  serve  to  show  the  reason  for  its  employ- 
ment: "We  have  never  taken  any  pains  to  overcome 
this  physical  impossibility  because  we  cared  nothing  as 
to  how  he  got  to  Elmira.  .  .  .  The  fact  exists  that  he 
got  to  Elmira,  and,  therefore,  the  'physical  impossi- 
bility' is  out  of  the  way  so  far  as  that  is  concerned.  He 
could  easily  have  got  there  by  a  special  train."  The 
special  train,  which  they  merely  guessed  at  in  this 


212  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

instance,  they  took  extraordinary  pains  to  prove  in 
order    to    overcome    another   physical   impossibility; 
namely  to  get  the  prisoner  (not  to  Elmira  bnt)  from 
Elmira,  where  they  admitted  he  was  on  the  morning  of 
the  thirteenth,  to  Washington  on  the  morning  of  the 
next  day.     ''Our  business,"  said  Pierrepont,  "was  to 
bring  him  to  Wasliington  and  that  we  have  done"; 
that  is,   they  did  it  in  the   following  manner.     The 
regular  train  out  of  Elmira,  at  8  o'clock  a.m.,  not 
being  available  for  their  purpose,  they  proved  that  a 
single  car,  which  had  brought  the  superintendent  of 
the  road  from  Williamsport,  left  Elmira  on  its  return 
between  ten  and  eleven  of  that  day   and  overtook 
the    passenger    train    at    Williamsport    at    half-past 
twelve ;  and,  although  the  conductor  took  up  no  tickets 
and  saw  no  passenger,  the  counsel  asked  the  jury  to 
presume  that  the  prisoner  stole  a  ride  on  this  extra. 
Having  by  this  clumsy  method  got  him  seventy-eight 
miles  on  his  iourney,  they  were  met  by  the  embarrass- 
ing  circumstance   that   the   regular   train    laid   over 
until  half -past  nine  in  the  evening  and  did  not  reach 
Sunbury,  forty  miles  farther  on,  until  after  midnight. 
From  Sunbury,  a  train  ordinarily  left  for  Baltimore 
fifteen  minutes  later,  arriving  at  its  destination  at 
7 :25  Friday  morning ;  and,  from  Baltimore,  a.  train 
left  at  8 :50  a.m.  and  carried  its  passengers  to  Wash- 
ington by  10  ;25  a.m.     This,  it  should  be  borne  in  mind, 
was  by  the  regular  mode  of  travel.    Unfortunately 
for  the  prosecution,  however,  travel  at  the  date  in 
question  was  seriously  impeded;  the  railroad  bridge 
over  the  Susquehanna  at  Williamsport  having  been 


TRIAL   OF   JOHN   H.    SURRATT         2.13 

carried  away  by  a  fresliet,  so  that  passengers  had  to 
be  taken  across  by  a  rope  ferry,  and  the  railroad 
between  Williamsport  and  Sunbury  torn  up  for  miles 
and  blocked  at  intervals  by  construction  trains  run- 
ning to  and  fro.  At  this  critical  juncture,  the  fine 
hand  of  the  Bureau  of  Military  Justice  becomes  plainly 
visible.  Montgomery,  who  played  Bedloe  to  the  Titus 
Oates  of  Conover  on  the  Conspiracy  Trial,  was  sent 
on  mission  in  partibus  and  returned  with  two  wit- 
nesses in  tow;  one,  the  trainmaster  at  Williamsport 
and  the  other  the  ferryman,  neither  of  whom  had  been 
confronted  with  the  prisoner  until  the  witness  entered 
the  court  room  on  the  last  days  of  the  trial.  The 
former  testified  that  he  remembered  a  person  on  the 
thirteenth  (over  two  years  ago),  who  seemed  very 
anxious  to  get  through,  inquiring  of  him  about  the 
trains;  and,  the  prisoner  standing  up,  he  swore  he 
could  not  be  positive  but  he  believed  him  to  be  the 
man.  The  latter  testified  that,  on  the  same  day,  he 
ferried  a  passenger  over  the  river  and,  the  prisoner 
standing  up,  he  swore  that  to  the  best  of  his  belief  that 
was  the  man.  Having  thus  got  him  over  the  river  in 
the  temporary  absence  of  the  bridge,  they  got  him  over 
the  broken  condition  of  the  road  by  asking  the  jury 
to  take  for  granted  that  the  prisoner  caught  rides 
on  the  construction  trains  and  got  to  Sunbury  in  time 
for  the  train  to  Baltimore,  reaching  Washington  at 
10 :25  A.M.  on  the  Friday  of  the  assassination. 

This  elaborate  chain  of  proof,  with  so  many  inter- 
mediate links  missing,  failed,  it  will  be  perceived,  to 
meet  the  conditions  of  the  problem  both  at  the  begin- 


214  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

ning  and  at  the  end.  Tlie  two  witnesses,  the  irre- 
fragibility  of  whose  testimony  forced  the  concession 
of  the  prisoner's  presence  in  Elmira,  although  they 
left  the  alternative  of  the  thirteenth  as  the  precise 
day,  fixed  unequivocally  the  hour  at  about  noon.  Con- 
sequently, the  superintendent's  car,  leaving  between 
ten  and  eleven,  was,  as  a  vehicle  of  travel,  no  more 
available  for  the  purpose  of  the  prosecution  than  the 
regular  train  leaving  at  eight.  Again,  at  "Washington, 
the  barber  fixed  the  hour  at  which  he  shaved  the  pris- 
oner at  "near  about  nine  o'clock";  whereas  a  pas- 
senger alighting  at  the  depot  at  10 :25  a.m.  could  hardly 
reach  the  shop  on  Pennsylvania  Avenue  much  before 
eleven.  Thus,  the  counsel  started  the  prisoner  at  an 
hour  too  early  to  fit  the  evidence,  and,  after  asking  the 
jury  to  infer  his  presence  on  a  private  car  and  on  con- 
struction trains,  that,  as  a  rule,  take  no  passengers 
and,  if  they  do,  the  passenger  is  sure  of  unusual  notice, 
they  landed  him  too  late  at  the  end.  The  discrepancy 
at  the  beginning,  Pierrepont  ignored  as  too  trivial  for 
notice;  that  at  the  end  he  brushed  aside  as  follows; 
"We  have  now  got  the  prisoner  here  at  10:25  and  are 
on  the  road  to  the  barber's.  I  now  turn  to  the  bar- 
ber's testimony.  ...  It  is  not  of  the  slightest  conse- 
quence whether  he  should  think  it  was  somewhere 
about  nine  o'clock  or  somewhere  about  ten  o'clock. 
It  was  undoubtedly  somewhere  about  ten  o'clock,  or 
a  little  after.  .  .  .  The  witness  did  not  attempt  to  fix 
the  time;  he  did  not  undertake  to  fix  it  at  all." 

It  was  thus  they  brought  the  "Beelzebub"  of  the 
conspiracy,  as  the  district  attorney  baptized  Surratt, 


TEIAL    OF   JOHN    H.    SUERATT  215 

upon  tlie  scene  of  action.  And,  after  all  the  stress 
and  strain  to  get  him  there,  they  found  no  part  for 
him  to  play.  He  goes  not  near  his  own  house.  His 
mother  and  his  college  chum  prepare  to  drive  to 
Surrattsville,  and,  as  they  are  about  to  start,  the 
** Satan"  of  the  conspiracy  appears;  all  three  in  utter 
ignorance  of  his  arrival.  At  the  final  council,  Booth 
distributes  the  divers  roles  in  the  impending  tragedy; 
the  slaughter  of  the  Secretary  of  State  is  assigned  to 
Payne,  the  murder  of  the  Vice  President  is  thrust 
upon  the  shrinking  Atzerodt;  even  the  insignificant 
Herold  is  at  least  to  attend  the  leader  in  his  flight. 
But  the  second  in  command  comes  not.  His  name  is 
not  written  among  the  "men  who  love  their  country 
better  than  gold  or  life."  Plunging  across  more  than 
a  hundred  leagues  of  country,  breasting  floods  and 
broken  rails,  without  pause  day  or  night,  in  obedience 
to  the  summons  of  his  chief,  he  shows  his  pale  face  to 
a  distracted  sergeant  and  then  vanishes  over  the 
northern  horizon. 

The  trial  dragged  its  slow  length  along  until  the 
twenty-second  of  July*  when  District  Attorney  Car- 
rington  addressed  the  jury.  Eichard  T.  Merrick,  the 
junior  counsel  of  the  defendant  followed,  creating  a 
profound  sensation  by  his  impassioned  vindication  of 
Mrs.  Surratt.  Joseph  H.  Bradley,  the  senior  counsel, 
in  the  course  of  his  address  which  ensued,  gave  utter- 
ance to  his  foreboding  that  this  was  the  last  time  he 
should  ever  address  a  Washington  jury;  which  turned 
out  to  be  true,  as,  at  the  conclusion  of  the  case,  he  was 

*  Note  V  to  this  chapter  in  Appendix. 


216  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

disbarred  by  an  order  of  the  judge.*  The  aged  lawyer, 
overburdened,  as  he  explained,  with  other  business, 
unfit  to  undergo  the  wear  and  tear  of  such  a  trial, 
knowing  that  neither  the  prisoner  nor  his  relatives 
were  able  to  recompense  him  for  his  services  or  even 
furnish  funds  for  the  necessary  disbursements,  had 
been  very  reluctant  to  engage.  **But,"  he  continued, 
*4f  you  had  seen  her  who  came  to  me,  you  could  not 
have  done  otherwise.  She  did  not  weep;  not  a  tear 
fell  from  her  eyes.  .  .  .  Two  years  of  long  continued 
suffering  had  wasted  that  fountain.  The  eye  once 
bright  in  her  was  dim,  the  countenance  depressed.  To 
be  sure,  it  was  lighted  up  with  the  hope  that  hereafter 
she  might  one  day  again  see  her  blessed  mother.  Yet 
I  refused.  I  refused  until  my  two  younger  brothers 
undertook  to  take  the  laboring  part  of  the  case."  His 
speech,  besides,  was  noteworthy,  on  account  of  the 
positive  charge  he  made,  founded  on  communications 
received  from  William  P.  Wood,  chief  detective  of  the 
treasury,  that  the  government  knew  before  the  indict- 
ment was  found  that  Surratt  was  in  Elmira  on  the  day 
of  the  assassination. 

On  Saturday,  the  third  of  August,  Edwards  Pierre- 
pont  began  the  closing  argument  for  the  United  States 
• — a  labored  effort  rendered  intolerably  tedious  by 
copious  readings  of  the  testimony,  decorated  with 
lengthy  quotations  from  the  Bible  and  suffused 
throughout  with  a  pious  unction.  This  distinguished 
advocate  held  that  the  claim  on  the  part  of  the  defence 
that  the  murder  of  a  President  was  a  crime  of  no 

*  Note  VI  to  this  chapter  in  Appendix. 


TRIAL   OF   JOHN   H.    SURBATT         217 

higher  grade  than  the  murder  of  a  private  citizen  was 
not  only  ''not  the  doctrine  of  a  statesman,  not  the  doc- 
trine of  the  Bible,"  but,  also,  was  "not  the  doctrine 
of  the  law,"  declaring  that  ''this  was  the  first  time  in 
the  history  of  this  country  when  an  opportunity  ever 
has  occurred  to  announce  this  great  legal  truth";  and, 
turning  to  the  judge  with  the  exclamation,  "Your 
honor  cannot  escape  it ;  and  the  country  will  call  upon 
you,  and  ask  you  not  to  escape  it;  and  they  will  hold 
you  responsible  if  you  dare  attempt  to  escape  it." 
Thus  did  he  admonish  the  court.  To  the  jury,  his 
admonition  was  of  a  different  tenor.  He  related  an 
incident  on  the  trial  of  a  man  for  murder,  at  which  he 
was  present  as  a  spectator.  The  jury  had  been  out  all 
night  deliberating  on  its  verdict,  and,  when  the  court 
convened  in  the  morning,  from  the  jury  room  was 
"heard  the  solemn  voice  of  prayer."  A  devout  man 
who  feared  God,  sitting  by  the  counsel,  said,  "That 
jury  will  agree."  And,  sure  enough,  "the  jury  arose 
from  their  bended  knees;  they  walked  into  the  court 
room  and  said  'He  is  guilty.*  Gentlemen,  if  there  is 
a  man  of  you  who  is  in  doubt  in  this  case,  or  any  num- 
ber of  you,  and  you  will  take  this  test,  it  is  all  I  ask." 
Wednesday,  the  seventh,  was  made  memorable  by 
the  charge  of  the  judge.  A  Delaware  Unionist,  pro- 
moted to  the  bench  of  the  District  as  a  reward  of  his 
loyalty,  George  P.  Fisher  not  only  blindly  followed  the 
leading  counsel  for  the  government,  but  he  bettered 
his  instructions.  Upholding  the  validity  of  the  mili- 
tary commission  in  the  face  of  the  Milligan  case,  he 
characterized  the  opinion  of  the  Supreme  Court  as 


218  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABEAHAM  LINCOLN 

*' being  predicated  upon  a  misapprehension  of  historic 
truth"  and,  therefore,  ''we  could  not,  perhaps,  have 
looked  for  a  more  rightful  deduction."  He  laid  down 
the  law  that  ''to  murder  the  duly  elected  President  of 
the  most  powerful  people  on  earth  is  not  less  atrocious 
in  its  character  than  to  compass  the  death  of  a  King,'* 
in  which  case,  as  in  the  case  of  treason,  there  could  be 
no  accessories  for  all  were  principals;  overruling  Sir 
Matthew  Hale  on  this  point  by  citing  "two  cases 
reported  in  that  book  of  highest  authority  known 
among  Christian  nations,  decided  by  a  judge  from 
whose  solemn  tribunal  all  judges  and  jurors  will,  in 
the  great  day,  have  their  verdicts  and  judgments 
passed  in  review":  one,  that  of  Naboth  and  Ahab  in 
the  twenty-first  chapter  of  the  first  book  of  Kings; 
and  the  other,  that  of  David  and  Uriah  in  the  eleventh 
chapter  of  second  Samuel.  In  conclusion,  he  reminded 
the  jury,  as  Pierrepont  had  done  before  him,  that  a 
verdict  adverse  to  the  government  might  lead  to  the 
removal  of  the  capitol  from  a  city  where  "the  persons 
of  the  public  servants  commissioned  by  the  people  of 
the  nation  to  do  their  work"  were  not  "safe  and 
sacred  from  the  presence  of  unpunished  assassins 
within  its  borders." 

The  jury  retired  about  noon  of  the  same  day  and 
remained  in  seclusion  until  one  o'clock  on  Saturday, 
the  tenth,  when  it  came  into  court  with  a  paper  inform- 
ing the  judge  that  the  jurors  "stood  precisely  now  as 
when  they  first  ballotted,"*  "nearly  equally  divided, 
and  could  not  possibly  make  a  verdict."    Whereupon 

*  8  to  4  for  the  prisoner. 


TRIAL   OF  JOHN   H.   SUERATT         219 

the  jury  was  discharged  against  the  protest  of  the 
prisoner  who  was  remanded  to  the  custody  of  the 
marshal.  The  idea  of  another  trial,  it  is  probable,  was 
never  seriously  entertained  by  the  government.  Under 
a  recent  act  of  Congress,  another  jury  could  not  have 
been  selected  before  the  ensuing  February;  and,  for 
the  sake  of  appearances,  the  defendant  was  kept  in 
jail  in  the  meantime;  and,  subsequently,  the  case  was 
set  down  for  the  twenty-fourth  of  that  month.  On 
that  day,  how^ever,  the  House  of  Representatives  being 
in  the  act  of  impeaching  the  President,  the  government 
was  in  no  condition  to  enter  upon  so  arduous  an  under- 
taking. On  the  twenty-second  of  June,  1868,  the 
defendant  was  released  on  bail,  and  three  months  later 
the  indictment  was  nol.  prosed* 

That  so  prominent  an  accomplice  in  the  murder  of 
the  ever-to-be-lamented  Lincoln  should  have  been 
allowed  to  walk  the  earth  a  free  man,  without  arousing 
an  overwhelming  outburst  of  popular  wrath,  is  expli- 
cable alone  on  the  hypothesis  that  the  public  at  large 
shared  in  the  misgivings  of  the  authorities  as  to  the 
strength  of  their  case.  The  plea  that  a  conviction  was 
impossible  from  a  jury  of  such  a  vicinage  as  Wash- 
ington was  a  gratuitous  insult  to  the  citizens  of  the 
capital,  in  the  face  of  the  fact  that  every  member  of 
the  late  jury  was  agreed  upon  by  both  sides;  and, 
moreover,  the  plea,  if  founded  on  fact,  may  have  fur- 
nished a  ground  for  a  change  of  the  place  of  trial,  but 
could  constitute  no  reason  why  the  surviving  murderer 
of  the  President  should  go  unwhipped  of  justice. 

*  Eep.  of  Sec.  of  State,  Feb.  1,  1868. 


220  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

Another  conclusion  follows  from  the  discharge  of 
the  prisoner.  Had  Surratt  been  caught  in  time  to  be 
tried  by  the  military  commission,  nothing  could  have 
saved  him  from  the  fate  of  his  mother.  Conversely, 
had  Mary  E.  Surratt  been  spared  to  be  tried  by  a  civil 
tribunal,  she  never  would  have  met  the  death  of  shame, 
but  would  have  been  restored  to  the  arms  of  her  now 
heart-broken  daughter.  As  the  decision  of  the  Su- 
preme Court  of  the  United  States  made  void  the  pro- 
ceedings of  the  military  commission  as  matter  of  law, 
so  the  discharge  of  her  son  reversed  its  condemnation 
on  the  merits  of  the  case. 


CHAPTER   IX 

The  Petition  for  Commutation 

The  trial  of  the  son  of  Mary  E.  Surratt  was  made 
historically  memorable  not  only  by  the  destructive 
effect  of  the  failure  to  convict  and  the  subsequent  dis- 
charge of  the  accused  upon  the  verdict  in  her  case, 
but,  especially  so,  by  the  emergence  into  the  light  of 
day  of  the  petition  in  her  favor  of  a  majority  of  the 
officers  who  condemned  her  to  death.  This  paper,  the 
knowledge  of  which  was  confined  to  the  members  of 
the  tribunal  who  met  in  secret  session,  on  the  return 
of  the  judge  advocate  general  from  his  interview  with 
the  President  when  the  death  warrant  was  signed,  dis- 
appeared in  the  archives  of  his  office.  Various  rumors 
of  its  existence  were  put  to  rest  in  October,  1865,  by 
the  publication  of  the  official  report  of  "The  Trial  of 
the  Conspirators'*  compiled  and  arranged  by  Benn 
Pitman,  "Recorder  to  the  Commission,"  with  the  per- 
mission of  Judge  Holt  granted  under  the  authority  of 
the  Secretary  of  War,  on  condition  that  the  work  "be 
prepared  and  issued  under  the  superintendence  of 
Colonel  Burnett,  who  will  be  responsible  for  its 
accuracy."  The  book  was  designed  to  be  not  merely 
a  transcript  of  the  testimony,  but  a  history  of  the 
assassination;  containing  not  only  matters  strictly  of 
record  but  every  document  and  paper  throwing  light  on 
the  subject.  The  evidence  was  reduced  to  narrative 
form,  grouped  under  appropriate  heads  and,  as  far  as 

(221) 


222  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

possible,  distributed  among  the  several  prisoners  re- 
spectively against  whom  it  was  directed.  The  findings 
and  sentences  were  given  with  the  President's  war- 
rant approving  them.  Every  order,  from  the  one  con- 
vening the  commission  to  the  one  changing  the  place 
of  confinement  of  the  defendants  sentenced  to  impris- 
onment from  the  Albany  Penitentiary  to  the  Dry  Tor- 
tngas,  was  scrupulously  included.  Room  was  found 
for  the  proceedings  under  the  writ  of  habeas  corpus 
on  behalf  of  Mrs.  Surratt.  An  appendix  contained 
the  opinion  of  the  attorney  general  sustaining  the 
jurisdiction  of  the  court,  dated  ''July,  1865";  "In- 
structions" to  the  armies  in  the  field,  in  ten  sections; 
the  supplementary  affidavit  of  Wiechmann  heretofore 
commented  upon,  and  another  by  the  officer  in  whose 
custody  Dr.  Mudd  was  taken  to  his  distant  prison, 
detailing  an  alleged  confession  of  the  man  he  had  in 
charge.  The  volume  was  illustrated  by  a  frontispiece 
containing  photographs  of  Booth,  Surratt  and  all  the 
defendants  except  Mudd ;  by  a  map  of  the  route  taken 
by  Booth  in  his  flight;  by  a  diagram  of  the  stage  and 
proscenium  of  the  theatre  as  they  appeared  at  the 
moment  the  assassin  leaped  from  the  box ;  and  a  plan 
of  the  streets  and  alleys  in  the  vicinity  of  the  building. 
And  yet,  with  all  this  superabundance  of  material  and 
wealth  of  illustration,  there  was  not  the  faintest  indi- 
cation of  the  existence  of  a  paper  of  such  primary 
significance  as  a  petition  for  the  commutation  of  the 
death  sentence  of  the  one  woman  among  the  eight 
prisoners  on  trial. 


PETITION    FOR   COMMUTATION         223 

The  rumors,  however,  wliich  this  official  publication 
endorsed  by  a  certificate  of  Colonel  Burnett  vouching 
for  "its  faithfulness  and  accuracy,"  effectually  scat- 
tered, were  brought  to  life  again  by  the  rupture  of  the 
President  with  the  Congress  and  by  the  suspicious 
delay  in  the  extradition  of  Surratt.  During  the  first 
week  of  the  trial  just  reviewed,  Pierrepont  followed 
up  his  promise  concerning  Booth's  diary  by  the  fol- 
lowing statement:  "It  has  likewise  been  circulated 
through  all  the  public  journals,  that  after  the  former 
convictions,  when  an  effort  was  made  to  go  to  the 
President  for  pardon,  men  active  here  at  the  seat  of 
government  prevented  any  attempt  being  made  or  the 
President  being  even  reached  for  the  purpose  of  seeing 
whether  he  would  not  exercise  clemency;  whereas  the 
truth  and  the  truth  of  record  which  will  be  presented 
in  this  court  is  that  all  this  matter  was  brought  before 
the  President  and  presented  at  a  full  cabinet  meeting, 
where  it  was  thoroughly  discussed;  and  after  such 
discussion,  condemnation  and  execution  received  not 
only  the  sanction  of  the  President  but  that  of  every 
member  of  his  cabinet."*  The  testimony  closed  with- 
out the  presentation  of  any  such  evidence,  a  breach 
of  promise  with  which  Merrick  twitted  his  adversary 
in  his  summing  up:  "Wliere  is  your  record?"  he 
asked.  "Why  didn't  you  bring  it  in?  Did  you  find 
at  the  end  ...  a  recommendation  of  mercy  in  the  case 
of  Mrs.  Surratt  that  the  President  never  saw! "f 

*  This,  evidently,  refers  to  the  informal  discussion  of  the  morning  of 
the  execution,  mentioned  by  Harlan  in  his  letter  to  Holt.  See  infra, 
p.  239. 

t  See  Note  I  to  this  chapter  in  Appendix. 


224  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

On  Saturday  (August  3rd)  Pierrepont,  in  opening 
Ms  address  to  the  jury,  endeavored,  under  the  guise 
of  a  defence  of  the  military  commission,  to  redeem  his 
broken  promise: 

"The  counsel  certainly  knew  when  they  were  talking  about 
that  tribunal  .  .  .  that  President  Johnson  ordered  it  with  his 
own  hand;  .  .  .  that  President  Johnson,  when  that  record 
was  presented  to  him  laid  it  before  his  cabinet,  and  that  every 
single  member  voted  to  confirm  the  sentence  and  that  the 
President  with  his  own  hand  wrote  his  confirmation  of  it, 
and  with  his  own  hand  signed  the  warrant.  I  hold  in  my 
hand  the  original  record,  and  no  other  man,  as  it  appears 
from  that  paper,  ordered  it.  No  other  one  touched  the  paper ; 
and  when  it  was  suggested  by  some  of  the  members  of  the 
commi^ion  that  in  consequence  of  the  age  and  sex  of  Mrs. 
Surratt  it  might  possibly  be  well  to  change  her  sentence  to 
imprisonment  for  life,  he  signed  the  warrant  for  her  death 
with  the  paper  right  before  his  eyes— and  there  it  is  (handing 
the  paper  to  Mr.  Merrick).  My  friend  can  read  it  for 
himself. ' ' 

There  it  was  at  last!  This  insignificant-looking 
flying  leaf!  Omitted  from  the  adjutant  general's 
order  promulgating  the  sentences,  omitted  from  the 
oflScial  report  of  the  trial,  unmentioned  by  the  judge 
advocate  in  his  "Brief  Eeview"  submitted  to  the 
President  and  in  his  annual  report  to  the  Secretary  of 
War,  withheld  from  the  public  for  the  last  two  years ; 
there  it  was  hanging  at  the  end  of  the  record  which 
the  counsel  for  the  United  States  held  up  in  his  hand 
and  flung  down  upon  the  table.  Even  now,  its  con- 
tents are  not  disclosed.    It  is  not  put  in  evidence  nor 


PETITION   FOR   COMMUTATION         225 

read  to  the  jury.  The  counsel  belittles  it  as  a  mere 
** suggestion."  Merrick  declines  to  touch  it  on  the 
ground  that  the  opportunity  has  passed  for  taking 
evidence  in  relation  to  it;  and  the  roll  lies  there 
unopened  until  Holt  calls  the  same  afternoon  to 
reclaim  it.  But,  though  still  unpublished,  enough  had 
been  said  in  the  crowded  court  room,  on  a  trial  attract- 
ing the  attention  of  the  whole  country,  to  preclude  the 
possibility  of  its  sinking  back  into  the  suspicious 
secrecy  in  which  it  has  hitherto  been  enveloped.  The 
declaration  of  the  counsel  was  spread  abroad  by  the 
newspapers  of  Sunday,  and  the  President  and  his 
cabinet  ministers  must  have  read  it.  What  happened 
on  Monday,  in  consequence,  the  chief  clerk  of  the 
Bureau  in  a  letter  to  its  head  subsequently  narrated : 

"On  the  5th  of  Au^ist,  1867,  Mr.  Stanton,  then  Secretary 
of  War,  sent  for  me,  and  in  presence  of  General  Grant,  asked 
me  who  was  in  charge  of  the  bureau  in  your  absence.  I  in- 
formed him  Colonel  Winthrop.  He  requested  I  should  send 
him  over  to  him,  which  I  did.  The  colonel  returned  and 
asked  me  for  the  findings  and  sentence  of  the  conspiracy  trial, 
telling  me  he  had  to  take  it  in  person  to  the  President.  On 
taking  the  portion  of  the  record  referred  to  from  the  bundle, 
I  found  from  the  frequent  handling  of  it  several  of  the  last 
leaves  had  torn  loose  from  the  ribbon  fastening,  and  to  secure 
them  I  put  the  eyelet  in  one  corner  of  it. ' ' 

The  official  relations  between  the  President  and  his 
Secretary  of  War  at  this  date  were  strained  to  the 
point  of  breaking;  the  President  on  the  previous 
Thursday  having  informed  General   Grant  that  he 

15 


226  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

could  no  longer  tolerate  Stanton  in  his  cabinet,  and 
Grant,  on  the  same  day,  ha^dng  written  the  President 
a  letter  remonstrating  against  the  threatened  removal. 
The  message  calling  for  the  record,  therefore,  must 
have  startled  the  occupants  of  Stanton's  office,  who 
may  have  been  in  the  act  of  conferring  together  over 
Pierrepont's  revelation,  the  amount  of  truth  in  which 
Stanton  was  able  to  appreciate.  Holt,  whether  absent 
or  present,  was  in  no  condition  to  face  the  man  with 
whom  he  held  the  confidential  interview  just  two  years 
and  one  month  ago.  Wliether  he  had  been  too  effusive 
in  detailing  the  history  of  the  document  he  carried  to 
the  court  room  on  Thursday  and  reclaimed  on  Satur- 
day, or  whether  the  counsel,  in  the  exuberance  of  his 
verbosity,  went  outside  his  brief,  the  truth  was,  accord- 
ing to  Holt  himself,  that,  at  this  date,  he  was  not 
aware  that  the  record  was  ever  laid  before  the  cabinet, 
much  less  that  the  petition  had  been  the  subject  of  dis- 
cussion as  Pierrepont  affirmed ;  a  state  of  ignorance  in 
which.  Holt  subsequently  charged,  he  was  kept  by 
Stanton  himself.  In  this  situation  it  was  lucky  that  a 
subordinate  who  knew  nothing  of  what  took  place  at 
the  confidential  interview  was  sent  with  the  record,  as 
thereby,  it  is  probable,  an  immediate  explosion  was 
averted.  According  to  Andrew  Johnson's  statement 
six  years  later,  he  sent  for  the  record  ''with  a  vi6w  of 
examining,  for  the  first  time,  the  recommendation  in 
the  case  of  Mrs.  Surratt";  and  "a  careful  scrutiny" 
convinced  him  "that  it  was  not  with  the  record  when 
submitted"  for  his  approval,  and  that  he  "had  neither 
before  seen  or  read  it."    If  this  statement  was  true, 


PETITION   FOR   COMMUTATION         227 

then  as  a  matter  of  course  Pierrepont's  public  declara- 
tion as  to  the  presence  of  the  petition  before  the  cabi- 
net had  no  foundation  in  fact;  and,  on  the  same  day 
and  after  he  had  made  this  astonishing  discovery,  the 
President  called  for  the  resignation  of  the  Secretary 
of  War,  and,  receiving  a  refusal  couched  in  offensive 
terms,  as  soon  as  he  could  arrange  with  Grant  to  take 
his  place,  suspended  the  offender. 

During  these  eventful  hours,  Pierrepont,  uncon- 
scious of  the  flurry  he  had  raised  in  the  War  Depart- 
ment and  unmindful  of  the  distressing  predicament  in 
which  he  had  placed  the  judge  advocate,  was  plodding 
his  way  through  the  mass  of  testimony  it  was  his  duty 
to  analyze;  while  Holt  was  waiting  on  the  anxious 
seat  for  an  opportunity  to  apprize  the  counsel  of  the 
necessity  to  soften  down  his  over-emphatic  affirmation. 
The  desired  interview  must  have  taken  place,  for,  on 
the  morning  of  Tuesday,  before  resuming  his  address, 
Pierrepont  interjected  what  on  any  other  hypothesis 
would  have  been  an  uncalled-for  and  superfluous  piece 
of  information. 

**You  will  recollect,  gentlemen,  when  a  call  was  made  sev- 
eral days  ago  by  Mr.  Merrick  .  .  .  asking  that  we  should  pro- 
duce the  record  of  the  conspiracy  trial,  that  I  brought  the 
record  here  and  handed  it  to  counsel.  I  then  stated  that,  as  a 
part  of  that  record  was  a  suggestion  made  by  a  part  of  the 
court  .  .  ,  that  if  the  President  thought  it  consistent  with 
his  public  duty  they  would  suggest,  in  consideration  of  the 
sex  and  age  of  one  of  those  condemned  that  a  change  might 
be  made  in  the  sentence  to  imprisonment  for  life.  I  stated 
that  I  had  been  informed  that  when  that  record  was  before 


228  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

the  President  and  when  he  signed  the  warrant  of  execution, 
that  recommendation  was  then  before  him.  I  want  no  mis- 
understanding about  that,  and  I  do  not  intend  there  shall  be 
any.  That  is  a  part  of  the  original  record  which  I  here  pro- 
duced in  court.  It  is  in  the  handwriting  of  one  of  the  mem- 
bers of  that  court,  to  wit,  General  Ekin.  The  original  of  that 
is  now  in  the  possession  and  in  the  handwriting  of  Hon.  John 
A.  Bingham.  "When  the  counsel  called  for  that  record  I  sent 
the  afternoon  of  that  day,  to  the  judge  advocate  general,  in 
whose  possession  these  records  are.  He  brought  it  to  me  with 
his  own  hand,  and  told  me  with  his  own  voice,  in  the  presence 
of  three  other  gentlemen,  that  that  identical  paper,  then  a  part 
of  the  record,  was  before  the  President  when  he  signed  the 
warrant  of  execution,  and  that  he  had  a  conversation  with  the 
President  at  that  time  on  the  subject.  That  is  my  authority ; 
subsequently  to  this,  having  presented  it  here,  the  judge  ad- 
vocate general  called  to  receive  it  back,  and  reiterated  in  the 
presence  of  other  gentlemen  the  same  thing.  That  is  my 
knowledge  and  that  is  my  authority. ' ' 

Here  every  trace  of  an  allusion  to  cabinet  officers 
or  a  cabinet  meeting  is  carefully  eliminated  and  the 
matter  in  difference  narrowed  down  to  what  took  place 
between  the  President  and  the  judge  advocate  when 
alone  together — the  former  averring  that  he  had  not 
seen  or  read  the  paper,  the  latter  that  the  petition  was 
before  the  President  and  that  the  two  officials  -had  a 
conversation  on  the  subject ;  averments,  both  of  which, 
curiously  enough,  might  be  true  and  yet  the  issue 
remain  undetermined. 

In  this  unsettled  condition,  the  controversy  sank  into 
silence  for  six  years — a  period  long  enough,  as  it 
appears,  to  obliterate  from  the  memory  of  the  parties 


PETITION    FOE   COMMUTATION         229 

concerned  this  interesting  incident  of  the  Surratt 
Trial.  The  President,  for  his  part,  took  no  steps  to 
call  his  subordinate  to  account  for  so  grave  a  derelic- 
tion of  duty.  Indeed,  there  is  nothing  to  show  that  he 
ever  countenanced  the  rumors  that  prevailed  so  far 
as  to  question  the  accused  official  on  the  subject.  It 
is  certain  that  until  the  startling  outburst  of  Pierre- 
pont  came  to  his  ears,  his  curiosity  had  never  been 
aroused  to  inspect  the  record;  and  even  after  he  got 
possession  of  the  criminating  document,  which  he 
retained  until  the  following  December,  it  does  not 
appear  that  he  communicated  his  conviction,  ''it  was 
not  with  the  record,"  to  the  person  most  deeply  impli- 
cated. He  suspended  Stanton,  without  whose  dicta- 
tion Holt  would  not  have  dared  to  move  a  finger  in  the 
matter;  but,  so  far  as  appears  from  his  message 
assigning  the  reasons  of  his  action,  the  suspension 
was  not  on  account  of  the  complicity  of  the  War 
Minister  in  the  delinquency  of  his  inferior  officer;  and 
he  suffered  the  culprit  to  remain  in  office  until  the  close 
of  his  administration.  It  should  be  remembered,  how- 
ever, as  an  offset  to  this  non-action,  that  Johnson  at 
this  time  had  ample  reason  to  walk  warily  in  such  a 
delicate  affair.  The  impeachers  were  on  his  track, 
scanning  his  whole  course  of  conduct  from  his  appoint- 
ment as  military  governor  of  the  state  of  Tennessee 
up  to  the  current  moment.  The  assassination  com- 
mittee, as  we  have  seen,  was  crying  out  to  every 
professional  witness  in  the  land,  "Ho!  come  hither 
and  partake  of  the  bounty  of  the  government. ' '  Stan- 
ton and  Holt  were  actively  aiding  and  abetting  the 


230  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

most  inveterate  of  his  adversaries;  Stanton  pacing  up 
and  down  outside  the  War  Office  on  the  watch  for  the 
signal  from  the  Senate  to  let  him  in,  and  Holt  collogu- 
ing with  Butler  and  Ashley  how,  by  means  of  the 
prerogative  of  pardon,  to  let  loose  upon  him  the  cham- 
pion perjurer  of  the  Conspiracy  Trial. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  judge  advocate  for  his  part 
drew  no  consolation  from  the  silence  reigning  at  the 
White  House.  As  though  apprehending  an  outbreak 
from  that  quarter,  he  set  about  collecting  testimony 
favorable  to  his  version  of  the  private  interview,  Stan- 
ton, to  whom  he  had  hastened  to  tell  what  had  occurred 
in  the  President's  office,  for  some  mysterious  reason 
would  afford  him  no  help,  and  to  Colonel  Burnett,  who, 
it  appears,  heard  what  he  told  Stanton,  he  made  no 
appeal.  From  his  senior  colleague  on  the  Conspiracy 
Trial  he  may  have  sought  counsel,  but  Bingham  was 
still  nursing  the  wounds  Butler  had  inflicted,  and  his 
voluble  lips  were  sealed.  To  General  Ekin  he  did 
apply,  within  two  weeks  after  the  Surratt  Trial, 
reminding  that  member  of  the  commission  by  letter 
of  his  call  on  the  day  of  or  immediately  after  the  exe- 
cution to  ascertain  the  fate  of  the  petition;  and  the 
general  sent  a  reply  detailing  what  the  judge  advocate 
had  told  him  on  that  occasion  as  fully  as  if  the  cor- 
respondence had  been  arranged  beforehand ;  evidence, 
however,  liable  to  the  objection  that  it  was  given  by 
one  of  the  parties  to  the  issue. 

This,  so  far  as  it  is  known,  was  the  sole  fruit  of  his 
researches  during  the  period  the  President  kept  the 
record  in  his  possession.   On  its  return  to  the  archives 


PETITION   FOR   COMMUTATION        .231 

he  took  the  precaution  to  obtain  from  two  of  his  clerks 
letters  describing  the  condition  of  the  document  when 
taken   away   and   when    brought   back,   with   special 
reference  to  the  precise  position  of  the  paper  in  dis- 
pute.   During  the  period  when  more  than  two  thirds 
of  the  House  of  Representatives  were  bent  upon  the 
decapitation  of  the  President  and  thirty-five  out  of  the 
fifty-four  senators  voted  to  remove  him  from  office, 
during  the  remainder  of  his  term  when,  stripped  of 
every  prerogative  of  his  office,  he  was  simply  holding 
on  to  give  place  to  the  head  of  the  ai*my  who  had  been 
chosen  his   successor,   the   judge   advocate   takes  no 
steps  to  silence  '*the  atrocious  calumny"  he  professes 
to  trace  to   the  door  of  the  despised  apostate.    He 
himself,  still  the  chief  of  the  Bureau  every  officer  of 
which  down  to  the  lowest  underling  is  devoted  to  his 
cause,  basks  in  the  sunshine  of  public  favor.     Stanton, 
though  forced  to  quit  the  cabinet,  is  still  the  idol  of 
the  radicals,  and  the  distinguished  special  assistant 
advocate  on  the  Conspiracy  Trial  has  added  to  the 
laurels  gained  by  the  conviction  of  Atzerodt  by  his 
brilliant  effort  to  make  under  the  forms  of  law  the 
same  vacancy  in  office  that  Providence  might  have 
anticipated  by  endowing  the  quasi  assassin  with  a 
stouter  heart.    Andrew  Johnson,  defeated  at  all  points, 
retires  into  what,  to  all   appearance,  is  everlasting 
oblivion,  leaving  his  unpunished  subordinate,  hat  in 
air,  cheering  on  the  triumphal  car  in  which  the  Con- 
queror of  the  Rebellion  sits  alone  in  his  glory.     And, 
yet,  the  judge  advocate,  pestered  as  he  is  by  what  he 
describes  as  **this  slanderous  rumor  buzzing  around) 


232  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

Ms  ears,**  takes  no  advantage  of  these  halcyon  days 
to  vindicate  his  character.  It  is  true  that,  in  Decem- 
ber, 1868,  he  addresses  a  letter  to  the  pastor  of 
St.  Paul's  church  in  Washington  who  attended  At- 
zerodt  to  the  scaffold  and  in  the  evening  called  at  the 
"White  House,  eliciting  from  the  reverend  gentleman 
a  repetition  of  the  talk  of  the  President  to  the  effect 
that  ''very  strong  appeals  had  been  made"  for 
clemency  toward  Mrs.  Surratt — telegrams,  even  threats 
had  been  used — ^but  he  could  not  be  moved,  for  the 
woman  ''kept  the  nest  that  hatched  the  egg^^',  but  this 
inconclusive  bit  of  testimony  is  all  he  is  able  to  gather 
during  the  next  four  years. 

As  for  the  ex-President,  he  seems  to  have  paid  no 
further  attention  to  the  matter.  Immediately  on  his 
retirement  he  threw  himself  into  the  contest  going  on 
in  his  own  state  against  the  reign  of  the  negro  and  the 
carpet-bagger,  gaining  a  majority  of  the  legislature 
in  favor  of  his  return  to  the  United  States  Senate,  but, 
eventually  being  defeated  because  the  other  senator 
was  a  resident  of  his  section.  In  1872  he  ran  for  rep- 
resentative in  Congress  from  the  state  at  large  against 
General  Cheatham,  the  candidate  of  the  recent  seces- 
sionists on  the  one  hand,  and  Horace  Maynard,  the 
candidate  for  the  radicals  on  the  other,  in  which  he 
was  assailed  for  "'the  murder  of  Mrs.  Surratt,"  but 
made  no  apology  and  no  mention  of  the  petition.  And 
so  the  matter,  apparently,  sank  to  its  final  rest. 

On  the  twenty-fourth  day  of  December,  1869,  at  the 
city  of  Washington,  died  the  man  who  knew  the  whole 
history  of  this  interesting  document.    The  device  of 


PETITION   FOR   COMMUTATION         233 

substituting  a  prayer  to  the  President  to  do  what  the 
majority  of  the  tribunal  had  the  power  of  doing  and 
were  inclined  to  do  themselves,  if  it  did  not  originate 
with  him,  had  at  least  his  hearty  concurrence. 
Whether  the  President  saw  that  paper  or  not  he  knew 
as  well  as  Holt  himself,  and  one  authoritative  word 
from  him  would  have  settled  the  question  at  once. 
And  yet  Edwin  M.  Stanton  died  without  speaking  that 
word.  According  to  Holt  he  not  only  kept  silent  him- 
self, but  he  enjoined  silence  on  others  who  knew  what 
Holt  insisted  was  the  truth.  Three  years  after  the 
death  of  the  member  of  Johnson's  cabinet  who  might 
be  fitly  styled  his  confidential  enemy,  died  (in  Octo- 
ber, 1872)  another  member  of  that  cabinet  who  was 
in  truth  the  confidential  adviser  of  his  chief  to  the  end. 
This  event,  although  in  the  lifetime  of  the  deceased  he 
had  never  sought  his  help,  seemed  to  have  stirred  the 
judge  advocate  to  a  revival  of  the  search  he  had 
allowed  to  sleep  so  long.  His  first  move  was  to  initiate 
a  correspondence  between  himself  and  his  distinguished 
colleague  on  the  military  commission,  then  living  in 
the  capital,  based  on  the  assumption  that  the  two  men 
had  not  conferred  with  each  other  on  the  subject  for 
the  past  eight  years.  His  letter  of  the  eleventh  of 
February,  1873,  closed  with  a  request  that  Bingham 
would  state  whether  or  not  he  had  a  conversation 
with  William  H.  Seward  concerning  the  petition  and, 
if  so,  to  state  all  he  said  on  the  subject.  Bingham's 
reply  is  more  than  satisfactory,  indeed  running  over. 
He  does  not  confine  himself  to  what  Seward  said,  but 
brings  in  Stanton,  whom  Holt  had  not  ventured  to 


234  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

include  in  his  inquiry.  After  stating  that  he  called 
Stanton's  attention  to  the  petition  ''before  the  final 
action  of  the  President"  (as  if  it  were  possible  that 
the  war  minister  could  have  been  unaware  of  its 
existence),  he  goes  on  to  say  that  "after  the  execu- 
tion" hearing  the  rumor  that  the  President  had  not 
seen  the  petition,  he  ''called  upon  Secretaries  Stan- 
ton and  Seward  and  asked  if  the  petition  had  been 
presented  to  the  President  before  the  death  sentence 
was  by  him  approved,  and  was  answered  by  each  of 
those  gentlemen  that  the  petition  was  presented  to  the 
President,  and  was  duly  considered  by  him  and  his 
advisers  before  the  death  sentence  .  .  .  was  approved, 
and  that  the  President  and  the  cabinet,  upon  such 
consideration  were  a  unit  in  denying  the  prayer  of  the 
petition;  Mr.  Stanton  and  Mr.  Seward  stating  that 
they  were  present."  Feeling  the  need  of  some  ex- 
planation of  his  failure  for  so  many  years  to  pass  this 
conclusive  information  on  to  his  sorely-tried  pro- 
fessional brother,  the  writer  subjoins  the  following: 
*' Having  ascertained  the  fact  as  stated,  I  then  desired 
to  make  the  same  public,  and  so  expressed  myself  to 
Mr.  Stanton,  who  advised  me  not  to  do  so,  but  rely 
upon  the  final  judgment  of  the  people."  "A  sad,  sad 
mockery ! ' '  indeed,  as  Holt  exclaims ;  but  the  explana- 
tion, such  as  it  is,  does  not  cover  the  case  of  Seward 
to  whom,  indeed,  the  writer  had  not  seen  fit  to 
** express"  himself.* 

Armed  with  this  hearsay  testimony  of  what  the  two 
members  of  Johnson's  cabinet  who  were  silent  in  the 

*  See  Note  TI  to  this  chapter  in  Appendix. 


PETITION    FOR   COMMUTATION         235 

grave  had  said  on  the  subject,  the  judge  advocate  felt 
warranted  at  length  to  call  upon  the  members  still 
living.  To  McCulloch  and  Welles  who,  like  Seward, 
remained  staunch  to  their  chief,  he  made  no  applica- 
tion. But  to  Speed  and  Harlan,  who  resigned  because 
of  disagreement  with  the  President's  policy,  he  did 
apply,  inclosing  a  copy  of  Bingham's  letter.  Speed 
replied  from  Louisville,  on  the  thirtieth  of  March,  and 
Harlan,  who  was  a  senator  of  the  United  States  from 
Iowa  at  the  time  of  the  President's  trial  and  voted  him 
guilty,  on  the  twenty-seventh  of  May.  In  July,  the 
judge  advocate,  as  if  not  yet  quite  confident  in  the 
strength  of  his  case,  arranges  another  correspondence 
between  himself  and  General  R.  D.  Mussey — who,  at 
the  time  of  the  assassination,  happening  to  be  in 
Washington  on  business  concerning  the  freedmen  of 
Tennessee,  was  detailed  for  duty  as  military  secretary 
of  the  new-made  President  and  acted  in  that  capacity 
until  he  went  over  to  the  side  of  the  majority  in  Con- 
gress in  the  fall.  To  him.  Holt  appealed  to  disregard, 
out  of  consideration  for  a  man  suffering  under  so 
gross  a  calumny,  the  confidential  character  of  his 
former  official  position  so  far  as  to  reveal  *'any 
declarations  of  the  President"  on  the  subject  of 
clemency  to  Mrs.  Surratt;  and,  without  waiting  for  a 
response,  on  the  fourteenth  of  August  he  addressed 
a  communication  to  the  Secretary  of  War  submitting 
**the  proofs  of  his  innocence";  viz.:  copies  of  his  cor- 
respondence with  Bingham  and  with  Speed  and 
Harlan,  together  with  the  letters  of  his  two  clerks  and 
the  correspondence  with  the  reverend  doctor  Butler, 


236  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

on  file  since  1868.  General  Mussey  delayed  no  longer 
than  the  nineteenth  in  coming  to  the  aid  of  his  friend 
with  "his  knowledge  of  the  facts  attending  the  con- 
viction of  Mrs.  Surratt,"  saying:  "I  am  very  confident, 
though  not  absolutely  assured,  that  it  was  at  this 
interview  (i.e.  just  after  the  President  came  out  of  the 
room  where  he  had  been  closeted  with  Holt)  Mr.  John- 
son told  me  that  the  court  had  recommended  Mrs. 
Surratt  to  mercy  on  the  ground  of  sex  (and  age  I 
believe).  But  I  am  certain  he  did  so  inform  me  about 
that  time."  And,  having  in  the  meantime  received 
complete  absolution  by  a  letter  from  Secretary  of  War 
Belknap,  on  the  twenty-sixth,  the  judge  advocate  laid 
''before  the  loyal  public,"  through  the  columns  of  the 
Washington  Chronicle  in  its  issue  of  that  day,  the 
entire  series  of  letters  with  notes  and  comments,  a 
publication  immediately  embodied  in  a  pamphlet  en- 
titled, "Vindication  of  Hon.  Joseph  Holt,  Judge- 
Advocate-General  of  the  United  States  Army." 

In  breaking  the  long  silence  covering  this  scandalum 
magnatum  which  its  reputed  originator  seemed  to  have 
forgotten,  this  veteran  in  court-martial  practice  knew 
well  the  risk  he  was  running.  To  demand  a  court  of 
inquiry,  as  he  pleads,  while  "his  enemy  and  slan- 
derer" could  "play  the  quadruple  role  of  organizer  of 
the  court,  accuser,  witness  and  final  judge"  would  have 
been  "the  very  madness  of  folly."  And,  during  the 
four  years  that  had  elapsed  since  his  adversary  was 
swept  out  of  power,  he  confesses  that  he  could  not 
muster  sufficient  confidence  in  his  single  oath,  cor- 
roborated by  "the  circumstantial  evidence"  he  was 


PETITION    FOE   COMMUTATION         237 

able  to  collect,  to  beard  the  wounded  lion  in  his  den. 
It  was  not  until,  at  so  late  a  day,  he  summoned  his 
former  special  assistant  to  lift  the  veil  from  cabinet 
deliberations,  access  to  which,  he  says,  had  been  "thus 
far  denied  him,"  that  he  could  brace  himself  for  the 
encounter.  Provided  from  this  source  with  the  neces- 
sary ammunition,  he  now  revives  the  declaration  of 
Pierrepont  on  the  Surratt  Trial,  which  he  forced  that 
counsel  to  withdraw,  and,  relegating  the  confidential 
iuter\aew  to  the  rear,  he  constitutes  the  cabinet  con- 
sideration of  the  petition  as  the  very  head  and  front 
of  his  defence.  And  this  misplaced  strategy  turned 
out  fatal  to  his  contention.  To  begin  with,  executive 
approval  of  the  proceedings  of  military  commissions 
or  courts-martial  is  rarely  a  cabinet  question.  The 
President  acts  in  the  capacity  of  commander-in-chief, 
calling  to  his  aid,  if  he  see  fit,  the  Secretary  of  War 
and,  it  may  be,  the  attorney  general,  who  alone  are 
supposed  to  be  familiar  with  the  testimony.  Possibly 
the  commutation  of  a  death  sentence  in  a  very  cele- 
brated cause  might  be  broached  incidentally  at  a 
cabinet  meeting;  but  whether  a  prayer  for  mercy 
because  of  sex  made  by  the  majority  of  a  military 
court  should  be  granted  or  not  is  a  collateral  question 
addressed  so  exclusively  to  the  discretion  of  the  ex- 
ecutive as  to  preclude  the  possibility  of  his  laying  it 
before  a  regular  session  of  his  official  advisers.  And, 
moreover,  if  Andrew  Johnson,  in  the  present  instance, 
had  followed  so  unprecedented  and  remarkable  a 
course,  there  could  have  been  no  mystery  or  secrecy 
about  the  petition  any  more  than  about  the  record  to 


238  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

which  it  was  attached.  The  paper  would  have  ap- 
peared in  every  subsequent  proceeding  connected  with 
the  case,  and  its  existence  known  of  all  men.  Finally, 
not  one  of  the  officers  who  handled  the  secret  roll 
supposed  for  a  moment  that  it  was  a  proper  subject 
for  cabinet  scrutiny.  Not  Holt,  who  kept  it  strictly 
private  during  the  four-days  illness  of  the  President, 
communicated  to  Stanton  and  Burnett  the  final  de- 
cision of  the  executive  as  soon  as  it  was  made  and 
consigned  the  warrant  to  the  adjutant  general  to  be 
promulgated  on  the  morrow.  Not  Stanton  or  Burnett 
who  received  the  communication,  or  the  adjutant  gen- 
eral who  delayed  not  to  promulgate  the  speedy  doom. 
Indeed,  had  such  been  the  rule,  concealment  of  the 
petition,  being  certain  of  detection,  never  would  have 
been  thought  of  and  Rumor  would  have  remained 
silent,  perforce,  for  want  of  wind  for  her  trumpet. 

It  is  no  wonder,  therefore,  that  the  two  living  ex- 
cabinet  officers  whom  the  judge  advocate  summoned  as 
witnesses  failed  signally  to  come  up  to  the  mark. 
Speed  declined  to  answer  pointblank  and  for  a  reason 
that  verges  on  the  absurd.  He  states  that  he  saw  the 
paper  attached  to  the  record  **in  the  President's 
office' ';  but  he  goes  not  a  step  farther.  He  does  not 
say  whether  or  not  any  other  cabinet  officer  was  there 
or  even  that  he  himself  was  there  in  his  official  capa- 
city. **I  do  not  feel  at  liberty  to  speak  of  what  was 
said  at  cabinet  meetings,"  he  says — ^which  he  was  not 
asked  to  do,  but  simply  to  state  whether  or  not  a  par- 
ticular paper  was  before  the  cabinet  at  a  meeting  held 
eight  years  ago;  and  to  refuse  such  a  reasonable 


PETITION    FOR   COMMUTATION         239 

request  because  of  his  ''sense  of  propriety"  was 
stretch  of  official  decorum  which  throws  a  sinister  light 
on  the  real  motive  of  his  silence.*  Harlan,  for  his 
part,  recalls  only  "an  informal  discussion,"  by  three 
or  four  members  of  the  cabinet,  of  the  question  of 
commutation,  at  which  he  declares  positively  "no  part 
of  the  record  of  the  trial,  the  decision  of  the  court  or 
the  recommendation  of  clemency  was  present."  He 
remembers  inquiring  at  the  time  whether  the  attorney 
general  examined  the  record  and  of  being  informed 
that  the  whole  case  had  been  carefully  examined  by 
that  officer  and  also  by  the  Secretary  of  War;  and  he 
further  states  that  the  question  was  never  submitted 
to  the  cabinet  for  a  formal  vote. 

Notwithstanding  these  serious  flaws,  now  plainly 
discernible,  the  "Vindication"  was  hailed  by  the  nu- 
merous friends  of  the  author  with  an  outburst  of 
congratulation.  His  antagonist,  far  off  in  the  moun- 
tains, was  suffering  from  a  second  defeat  in  the  effort 
to  reenter  public  life.  The  columns  of  the  very  jour- 
nal that  was  the  vehicle  of  his  triumph  were  adorned 
by  the  "Reminiscences"  of  Henry  S.  Foote,  wherein 
the  ex-President  was  "arraigned  as  having  been 
in  complicity  with  President  Lincoln's  murderers." 
Months  passed  by,  and  it  seemed  that  the  object  of 
this  twofold  attack  was  disposed  to  treat  the  challenge 
of  his  former  subordinate  with  the  silent  contempt 
under  which  the  insane  charge  of  the  ex-senator 
withered  and  died.  The  judge  advocate  began  to 
soothe  himself  with  the  imagination  that  the  man  who 

*  See  Note  III  to  this  chapter  in  Appendix. 


240  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

turned  Stanton  out  of  office,  outfaced  Grant  and  defied 
the  Congress,  kept  in  the  background  from  fear.  His 
idea  was  that  while  Seward  and  Stanton  were  living 
Johnson  dared  not  speak  out,  and,  now,  when  their 
deaths  had  removed  that  source  of  apprehension,  he 
was  deterred  from  coming  forward  because  he  gath- 
ered from  Holt's  Vindication  that  Bingham  had 
perpetuated  their  testimony.  It  required,  so  Holt 
imagined,  ''the  pressure  of  those  who,  having  for 
years  engaged  in  spreading  this  calumny,  would 
naturally  insist  that  he  should  stand  up  to  their  labors 
in  his  behalf"  to  force  him  to  the  front.  Among  the 
gifts  which  nature  had  showered  on  Joseph  Holt,  that 
of  reading  character  was  not  numbered ;  but  he  never 
made  a  greater  blunder  in  so  doing  than  when  he 
imputed  reluctance  to  engage  in  a  fight  to  Andrew 
Johnson.  And  this  notion  he  soon  had  good  reason 
to  reconsider. 

The  answer  of  Johnson,  published  in  the  Chronicle 
of  the  twelfth  of  November,  simply  shattered  the  posi- 
tion his  challenger  had  deliberately  chosen  to  reas- 
sume.  That  the  petition  was  "duly  considered"  by 
the  President  "and  his  advisers  before  the  death  sen- 
tence upon  Mrs.  Surratt  had  been  approved"  and  that 
the  cabinet  was  "a  unit"  in  denying  its  prayer,  he 
showed  to  be,  under  the  undisputed  facts  of  the  case, 
an  absolute  impossibility. 

' '  The  papers  .  .  .  were  considered  and  approved  by  me  in 
the  presence  only  of  Judge  Holt ;  who  himself  wrote  the 
approval  for  my  signature,  and,  after  I  had  affixed  to  it  my 
name,  took  away  with  him  the  record.     This  wa.s  the  first  and 


PETITION    FOR   COMMUTATION         241 

only  time  I  saw  the  papers  prior  to  the  execution ;  and,  as  my 
approval  was  given  ...  in  the  afternoon  of  Wednesday  the 
5th  of  July,  1865;  and  as  immediately  afterward  the  record 
must  have  been  taken  by  Judge  Holt  to  the  War  Department, 
where  by  an  order  of  the  adjutant  general  of  the  same  date, 
the  approval  was  promulgated  and  General  Hancock  com- 
manded to  cause  the  sentences  'to  be  duly  executed';  and  as 
no  cabinet  meeting  was  held  thereafter  until  Friday  .... 
(the  day  of  the  execution),  it  is  impossible  that  Mrs.  Surratt's 
ease  could  have  been  submitted  to  the  cabinet  'before  the 
death  sentence  was  by  him  approved'— as  Judge  Bingham  dis- 
tinctly asserts."  "The  years  which  have  intervened  seem  not 
only  to  have  weakened  Judge  Bingham's  respect  for"  the 
advice  of  Stanton,  but  "also  seriously  to  have  impaired 
his  recollection  of  the  words  of  which  his  ears  were  the 
recipients. ' ' 

The  informal  discussion  to  which  Harlan  refers  and 
Holt  identifies  as  ''undoubtedly  the  cabinet  meeting 
to  which  Bingham  refers,"  Johnson  places  on  Friday, 
**the  day  of  the  execution — two  days  after  the  ap- 
proval of  the  sentence. ' '  The  point  made  by  the  judge 
advocate  that,  because  Harlan  on  that  occasion  was 
informed  that  the  whole  case  had  been  examined  and 
the  only  question  ''raised  was  the  one  of  clemency  on 
account  of  sex — the  ground  taken  in  the  petition 
alone,"  therefore,  "the  petition  itself  had  also  been 
examined"  and  "reported  upon";  Johnson  meets  as 
follows : 

' '  In  passing  upon  the  case  of  a  woman  sentenced  to  under- 
go the  extreme  penalty  of  the  law,  the  simple  fact  that  she  is 

a  woman  appeals  to  sympath}'^  and  such  mercy,  though  there 
16 


242  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

may  not  be,  from  a  portion  of  those  who  tried  her,  a  recom- 
mendation that  the  dungeon  should  be  substituted  for  the 
gibbet.  This  consideration,  in  connection  with  that  of  age,  had 
influenced  five  membei-s  of  the  commission.  ...  If  the  ques- 
tion of  sex  and  age  presented  itself  to  the  minds  of  those  who 
had  tried  and  condemned  her,  is  it  strange  that  in  the  absence 
of  any  petition  whatever  it  also  suggested  itself  to  the  execu- 
tive, who  had  to  pass  upon  their  finding?" 

The  other  branch  of  the  Vindication,  viz.,  the  con- 
fidential interview  at  which  the  death  warrant  was 
drawn  np  by  the  judge  advocate  and  signed  by  the 
President,  as  we  have  already  intimated,  Holt  sub- 
ordinates entirely  to  the  "testimonies"  he  submits  of 
the  cabinet's  consideration  of  the  petition,  without 
which  he  would  not  have  ventured  to  appeal  to  the 
public.  Indeed,  what  he  has  to  say  concerning  what 
took  place  on  this  momentous  occasion  he  does  not  say 
directly  to  the  public,  but  incorporates  in  his  letter  of 
inquiry  to  his  colleague  on  the  commission : 

**In  the  discharge  of  my  duty,  when  presenting  that 
record  to  President  Johnson,  I  drew  his  attention  to 
that  recommendation,  and  he  read  it  in  my  presence, 
and  before  approving  the  proceedings  and  sentence." 
To  this  branch  Johnson's  answer  was  just  as  explicit 
as  his  answer  to  the  other  branch  of  the  case,  but, 
owing  to  the  absence  of  even  so  slight  corroboratory 
testimony  as  Holt  was  able  to  adduce,  perhaps  not  so 
conclusive. 

Referring  to  Holt's  reminder  to  Bingham  that  the 
President's  friends  fabricated  the  charge  in  question 


PETITION    FOR   COMMUTATION         243 

**to  shield  the  executive/*  he  embraces  the  oppor- 
tunity to  say:  "I  have  never  attempted,  througK 
friends  or  otherwise,  to  shrink  from  any  responsibility 
in  connection  with  the  execution  of  President  Lin- 
coln's assassins  or  from  the  faithful  discharge  of  any 
other  duty  imposed  by  the  Constitution  and  laws  of 
the  country";  and,  then  he  gives  the  following  plain 
statement : 

"The  record  of  the  court  was  submitted  to  me  by  Judge 
Holt  in  the  afternoon  of  the  5th  day  of  July,  1865.  Instead 
of  entering  the  executive  mansion  by  the  usual  way,  he  gained 
admission  by  the  private  or  family  entrance  to  the  executive 
office.  The  examination  of  the  papers  took  place  in  the  library, 
and  he  and  I  alone  were  present.  The  sentences  of  the  court 
in  the  cases  of  Herold,  Atzerodt  and  Payne  were  considered 
in  the  order  named,  and  then  the  sentence  in  the  case  of  Mrs. 
Surratt.  In  acting  upon  her  case  no  recommendation  for  a 
commutation  of  her  punishment  was  mentioned  or  submitted 
to  me;  but  the  question  of  her  sex,  which  had  already  been 
adverted  to  and  discussed  in  newspaper  columns,  presented  it- 
self, and  was  commented  upon  both  by  Judge  Holt  and  myself. 
With  peculiar  force  and  solemnity  he  urged  that  the  fact  that 
the  criminal  was  a  woman  was  in  itself  no  excuse  or  pallia- 
tion, that  when  a  woman  'unsexed  herself  and  entered  the 
arena  of  crime,  it  was  rather  an  aggravation  than  a  mitigation 
of  the  offense ;  that  the  law  was  not  made  to  punish  men  only, 
but  all,  without  regard  to  sex,  who  violated  its  provisions ;  that 
to  discriminate  in  favor  of  Mrs.  Surratt  and  against  Herold, 
Atzerodt  and  Payne,  who  were  sentenced  by  the  same  court 
and  at  the  same  time  to  suffer  the  penalty  of  death,  would  be 
to  offer  a  premium  to  the  female  sex  to  engage  in  crime  and 
become  the  principal  actors  in  its  commission;  that  since  the 


244  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

rebellion  began,  in  some  portions  of  the  country,  females  had 
been  prominent  in  aiding  and  abetting  traitors,  and  he  thought 
the  time  had  come  when  it  was  absolutely  necessary,  in  a  case 
so  clearly  and  conclusively  established,  to  set  an  example 
which  would  have  a  salutary  influence.  He  was  not  only  in 
favor  of  the  approval  of  the  sentence,  but  of  its  execution  at 
the  earliest  practicable  day. 

"Upon  the  termination  of  our  consultation  Judge  Holt 
wrote  the  order  approving  the  sentences  of  the  court,  I  affixed 
my  name  to  it,  and  rolling  up  the  papers,  he  took  his  leave, 
carrying  the  record  with  him,  and  departing  as  he  had  come, 
through  the  family  or  private  entrance. ' ' 

He  points  out  in  passing  that  Speed  must  have  seen 
the  record  with  the  petition  attached  not,  as  that 
ex-cabinet  officer  states,  in  the  "President's  office," 
but  in  the  War  Office  whither  it  was  taken  by  Holt 
immediately  on  the  termination  of  the  confidential 
interview;  unless  (as  Holt  subsequently  suggests)  he 
was  a  secret  witness  to  that  official  colloquy. 

The  head  of  the  Bureau  of  ^Military  Justice  having 
had  the  effrontery  to  upbraid  his  present  adversary 
for  "rendering  inoperative"  the  writ  of  habeas  cor- 
pus in  the  case  of  Mrs.  Surratt,  remarking  in  depreca- 
tion of  his  "defiant  action,"  that  otherwise  "her  life 
would  not  then  have  been  taken,"  the  ex-President, 
in  reply,  displays  none  of  the  tardy  compunction  which 
seems  to  trouble  the  judge  advocate,  but  justifies  his 
disobedience  of  the  writ  as  the  discharge  of  an  impera- 
tive duty  imposed  upon  him  by  an  act  of  Congress. 
He  closed  his  answer,  which  the  hostile  journal  pub- 
lishing it  pronounced  "a  remarkably  luminous  docu- 


PETITION   FOR   COMMUTATION         245 

ment,  dignified  and  free  from  needless  personalities 
and  all  vituperation,"  by  the  following  animadversion 
upon  the  absence  of  the  petition  from  the  official  re- 
port of  the  trial : 

"If  we  may  accept  the  statement  of  the  judge  advocate 
general,  the  charge  against  which  he  now  attempts  to  defend 
himself  was  made  'soon  after  the  execution  of  Mary  E.  Sur- 
ratt,'  and  his  attention  having  been  then  necessarily  called  to 
the  subject,  it  was  his  imperative  duty  to  supply  the  omission 
or  to  make  the  correction.  It  is  doubtful,  however,  whether, 
had  not  the  existence  of  the  petition  by  some  means  become 
known  to  'certain  public  journals,'  it  would  ever  have  been 
divulged,  or  carefully  attached  to  the  papers  by  'patent  eye- 
lets' to  become  'confirmation  strong'  of  Judge  Holt's  'inno- 
cence '  of  the  '  cruel  imputation '  under  which  he  has  been  con- 
tent so  long  to  lie. 

"It  being  absolutely  certain  that  if  the  petition  was 
attached  to  the  original  record  before  it  was  submitted  to  the 
President,  it  is  not  to  be  found  in  the  printed  record  author- 
ized by  Judge  Holt  and  certified  to  by  Colonel  Burnett,  special 
judge  advocate  of  the  commission,  the  question  arises,  which 
of  the  two  is  authentic  and  genuine  ?  If  the  record  in  posses- 
sion of  the  judge  advocate  is  true,  then  that  is  false  which 
he  has  given  to  the  public.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  the  record, 
published  with  his  official  sanction  is  true,  then  that  in  his 
bureau  is  false  necessarily.  Judge  Holt  is  at  liberty  to  accept 
either  alternative,  and  to  escape  as  he  may  the  inevitable  con- 
clusion that  he  did  not  only  fail  to  submit  the  petition  to  the 
President,  but  suppressed  and  withheld  it  from  the  official 
history  of  the  most  important  trial  in  the  annals  of  the 
nation. ' ' 


246  ASSASSINATION  OP  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

This  *' remarkably  luminous  document"  drew  forth 
a  so-styled  '' Refutation,"  which  unlike  the  paper  it 
was  intended  to  refute,  was,  indeed,  full  of  ''needless 
personalities  and  all  vituperation."  At  the  outset, 
oblivious  of  his  own  plea  in  excuse  for  his  long  silence 
■ — "I  was  without  testimony  and  knew  not  where  to 
look  for  it" — the  judge  advocate  is  thrown  into  a 
passion  at  the  bare  suggestion  of  his  antagonist,  in 
excuse  for  his  not  calling  his  delinquent  subordinate 
to  account,  that  there  might  have  been  at  that  time 
*' reasons"  that  "would  in  all  probability  have  op- 
erated against  any  development  of  the  facts  of  this 
case."  So  far  does  his  wrath  carry  him  away  that  he 
plucks  up  by  the  locks  the  carcass  of  the  self-slain 
charge  that  Butler  and  Ashley  and  Conover  had 
dropped  in  despair.  *' There  must  have  been,"  he 
insinuates,  '  *  something  very  fearful  in  his  contempla- 
tion to  lead  him  to  disregard  an  imperative  public 
duty,  .  .  .  rather  than  suffer  the  field  of  inquiry  in 
relation  to  the  conspiracy  and  assassination  to  be 
again  opened.  Was  it  apprehended  that  in  the  shad- 
ows of  the  field  an  accomplice  or  accomplices  might  be 
lurking  who  could  not  be  safely  dragged  to  light?" 
And  in  this  denunciatory  strain  he  continues  to  the 
end.  Johnson's  recapitulation  of  the  arguments  used 
by  Holt  at  the  confidential  interview  adverse  to 
clemency  to  female  criminals,  which  bear  so  remarka- 
ble a  resemblance  to  those  put  into  the  President's 
own  mouth  by  the  reverend  doctor  Butler  and  General 
Mussey  in  their  letters  embraced  in  the  Vindication; 
his  insinuation  that  the  reason  why  the  papers  were 


PETITION   FOR   COMMUTATION         247 

not  submitted  in  the  usual  way  through  the  Secretary 
of  War  but  by  the  judge  advocate  in  private  was  "to 
save  time  and  hasten  the  execution,  thus  evincing 
the  spirit  that  animated  Holt  during  the  entire  pro- 
ceedings" drove  that  officer  to  such  a  height  of  exas- 
peration that  with  his  record  on  the  Conspiracy  Trial, 
his  ''Brief  Review"  of  the  case  and  his  report  to  the 
Secretary  of  War  behind  him,  he  assumes  the  attitude 
of  a  horror-stricken  witness  to  the  cold-blooded  cruelty 
of  his  chief:  "I  should  have  shuddered  to  propose  the 
brief  period  of  two  days  within  which  the  sentences 
should  be  executed,  for  with  all  the  mountain  of  guilt 
weighing  on  the  heads  of  those  wretched  culprits,  I 
still  recognized  them  as  human  beings,  with  souls  to 
be  saved  or  lost,  and  could  not  have  thought  for  a 
moment  of  hurrying  them  into  the  eternal  world,  as 
cattle  are  driven  to  the  slaughter  pen,  without  a  care 
for  their  future." 

Admitting  that  he  assented  to  the  doctrine  that 
**sex  is  no  excuse  for  treason"  and  advised  that  **the 
sentences  should  be  enforced,"  he  asseverates  that  he 
was  lamblike  in  his  course  during  the  trial,  that  he 
did  not  fix  the  fatal  Friday,  though  ''he  wrote  it 
down,"  yet,  in  the  newborn  tenderness  in  his  heart  he 
burst  forth  in  the  following  arraignment  of  his  su- 
perior officer: 

"As  chief  magistrate  he  was,  under  the  Constitution,  the 
depository  of  the  nation's  clemency  and  mercy  to  the  con- 
demned, and  a  pressing  responsibility  rested  upon  him  to 
hear  the  victims  of  the  law  he  fore  he  struck  them  down.  .  .  . 
Did  he  do  this  ?    On  the  contrary  ...  he  gave  a  peremptory 


248  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

order  to  admit  nobody  seeking  to  make  any  appeal  in  behalf 
of  the  prisoners,  .  .  .  even  Mrs.  Surratt's  spiritual  adviser 
who  came  to  beg  for  her  a  day  or  an  hour  of  life."  And  .  .  . 
after  having  closed  his  door,  his  ears  and  his  heart  against 
every  appeal  for  mercy  in  her  behalf,  hurried  this  helpless 
woman  almost  unshrived  to  the  gallows. ' ' 

This  is  rich  indeed !  But  the  strongest  evidence  that 
the  judge  advocate  had  lost  his  self-possession  was  the 
transparent  sophistry  with  which  he  seeks  to  evade  the 
blow  to  Bingham's  cabinet  meeting.  Conceding  that 
from  the  final  adjournment  of  the  court  to  the  day  of 
the  approval  of  its  sentences  "the  President  had  been 
sick  in  bed  and  had  of  course  had  no  opportunity  of 
conferring  with  any  members  of  his  cabinet,"  yet  he 
stigmatizes  the  conclusion  that  a  meeting  before  the 
approval  was  an  impossibility  as  "intensely  disin- 
genuous," not  indeed  because  it  was  illegitimate,  but 
because  it  left  out  of  view  the  possibility  of  a  meeting 
after  the  approval.  He  maintains  that  the  signing  of 
the  death  warrant  and  its  promulgation  amounted  to 
*'no  more  than  a  letter  written  and  remaining  on  the 
*  President's'  table  which  he  could  recall  at  pleasure 
until  posted";  that  is,  his  decision  was  revocable  at 
any  time  before  the  drop  fell.  "Wliat  Messrs.  Seward 
and  Stanton  clearly  meant  was  that  before  the  Presi- 
dent had  finally  and  definitely  approved  the  sen- 
tences," the  question  of  commutation  was  raised  in 
the  cabinet.  He  scouts  the  "idea"  that  the  President 
* '  ever  thought  of  enforcing  the  sentences,  without  con- 
ferring with  at  least  three  members  of  his  cabinet 
whose  duties  connected  them  most  intimately  with  the 


PETITION    FOR   COMMUTATION         249 

case,"  as  one  ''not  to  be  entertained  for  a  moment." 
Yet  that  very  "idea"  he  must  have  entertained  him- 
self. Else,  why  did  he,  coming  with  the  signature  to 
the  death  warrant  hardly  dry  in  his  hands,  inform  the 
Minister  of  War  of  the  President's  determination  and 
*'the  view"  on  the  subject  of  mercy  to  female  rebels 
which  the  President  so  "vehemently  presented"?* 
Else,  why  did  he  "shudder"  when  the  Chief  Magis- 
trate fixed  with  cruel  haste  '*the  brief  period  of 
doom"?  Stanton,  whose  duties,  surely,  "connected 
him  most  intimately  with  the  case,"  evidently  did  not 
expect  to  be  consulted  after  he  heard  this  disposition 
of  the  matter.  And  General  Mussey — Johnson's 
private  secretary — whose  letter,  according  to  Holt, 
*' constituted  so  impressive  a  part"  of  his  Vindication 
— appears  to  have  entertained  no  doubt  of  its  finality: 

"Mr.  Johnson  came  out  of  the  room  where  he  had  been 
with  yon  (i.  e.  Holt)  and  said  to  me  that  the  papers  had  been 
looked  over  and  a  decision  reached.  I  asked  him  what  it 
was.  He  told  me,  approval  of  the  finding  and  sentences  of 
the  court;  and  then  gave  me  the  sentences,  as  near  as  he 
remembered  them,  and  said  that  he  had  ordered  the  sentence, 
where  it  was  death,  to  be  carried  into  execution  on  the  Friday 
following.  I  remember  looking  up  from  my  desk  with  some 
surprise  at  the  brevity  of  this  interval,  and  asking  him  whether 
the  time  wasn't  rather  short.  He  admitted  that  it  was,  but 
said  they  had  had  ever  since  the  trial  began  for  '  preparation ' ; 
and  either  then,  or  later  in  the  day,  spoke  of  his  design  in 
making  the  time  short,  so  that  there  might  be  less  opportunity 
for  criticism,  remonstrances,  etc.  .  .  .  He  also  instructed  me 

*  See  Note  III  to  Chap.  V  in  Appendix. 


250  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

that  he  did  not  desire  to  see  any  one  .  .  .  and  to  direct  all 
.  .  .  ,  if  they  had  any  fresh  evidence  or  any  new  reason  why 
the  sentence  should  not  be  executed,  to  send  them  to  you  that 
you  might  hear  their  story  and   communicate  it  to  him." 

Finally,  the  inhabitants  of  the  capital,  when,  on 
Thursday  morning,  the  proclamation  of  death  within 
twenty-four  hours  was  heard  on  the  streets,  and  the 
condemned  when  it  was  read  in  their  cells  at  noon, 
seemed  to  be  under  the  same  impression. 

But  although  the  judge  advocate  is  driven  to  con- 
cede that  there  could  have  been  no  cabinet  meeting 
before  the  approval,  he  does  succeed  in  making  it 
appear,  and  that  by  the  admission  of  Johnson  himself, 
that  there  was  some  sort  of  a  consultation  after  the 
death  warrant  was  signed.  Still  this  does  him  no 
good;  for  the  meeting  could  have  been  no  other  than 
the  incidental  discussion  alluded  to  by  Harlan,  when 
neither  record  nor  petition  was  present;  for  even  Holt 
does  not  contend  that  there  could  have  been  two  meet- 
ings after  the  President's  decision.  He  urges,  how- 
ever, that  the  signature  was  not  final  because  * '  one  of 
the  questions  involved  was  openly  discussed"  at  this 
meeting;  yea,  verily,  but  the  question  discussed  was 
not  raised  by  the  petition  which,  whether  suppressed 
or  not  suppressed,  had  done  its  office ;  but  by  the  out- 
side pressure  for  a  reprieve.  That  Friday  was  the 
regular  meeting  day  of  the  cabinet  is  immaterial 
because  on  this  particular  Friday,  in  view  of  the 
awful  scene  about  to  take  place  in  the  arsenal  yard,  no 
public  business  was  done  and  any  consultation  on  the 


PETITION    FOR   COMMUTATION         251 

subject  weighing  upon  all  hearts  could  not  be  other 
than  "accidental." 

At  the  close  of  this  memorable  newspaper  con- 
troversy, therefore,  the  question  in  dispute  was  left  in 
the  same  condition  as  at  the  end  of  the  Surratt  Trial. 
The  issue  hung  upon  what  occurred  within  the  walls 
of  that  room  where,  on  the  fifth  day  of  July,  1865,  the 
President  and  the  judge  advocate  sat  alone  with  the 
record  lying  between  them.  And  there  it  is  destined 
to  abide.  Johnson  took  no  notice  of  his  opponent's 
fierce  rejoinder,  which  was  subsequently  embodied  in 
another  pamphlet.  He  resumed  his  contest  for  the 
senatorship  and,  in  less  than  two  years,  took  his  seat 
in  the  body  that  came  within  one  vote  of  removing 
him  from  the  presidency.  So  dramatic  a  triumph  he 
was  justified  in  regarding  as  a  sufficient  answer  to  the 
charge  of  his  former  subordinate  that  he  had  ''de- 
clared a  falsehood  than  which  nothing  falser  has  ever 
fallen  from  the  lips  of  men  or  devils."  On  his  sudden 
death  the  ensuing  summer,  his  fellow-senators — 
friends  and  foes  alike — united  in  testifying  to  his 
indomitable  will,  his  unfaltering  courage,  his  simple 
honesty,  his  nobility  of  soul.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
judge  advocate  could  not  rest  easy  on  his  vaunted 
laurels.  Ten  years  afterwards  we  find  him  conjuring 
the  sphinx-like  Speed,  by  every  consideration  of  honor, 
friendship  and  common  fairness,  now  that  ''the 
treacherous  executive"  had  "gone  to  his  own  place," 
to  come  to  his  help.  But  the  ex-attorney  general's 
high-flown  notion  of  official  propriety  neither  the  lapse 
of  years  nor  the  ravages  of  death  could  modify;  even 


252  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

the  bait  held  out  to  him  that  he  was  an  unseen  spec- 
tator of  the  confidential  interview,  he  was  too  wary 
to  take.* 

So  that,  as  we  have  already  remarked,  the  testimony 
as  to  what  took  place  on  that  memorable  occasion  is 
reduced  to  the  two  versions  of  the  parties  thereto ;  the 
judge  advocate  affirming  that  '*he  drew  the  Presi- 
dent's attention  specially  to  the  recommendation  in 
favor  of  Mrs.  Surratt,  which  he  read  and  freely  com- 
mented on,"  the  ex-President  affirming  that  '4n  acting 
upon  her  case  no  recommendation  for  commutation  of 
her  sentence  was  mentioned  or  submitted." 

Such  being  the  condition  of  the  testimony,  the  ques- 
tion of  motive  rises  to  paramount  importance.  Holt's 
answer  to  the  question:  ''What  could  have  been  John- 
son's motive  for  the  original  fabrication  of  this 
calumny?"  was  as  follows:  ''He  had  not  broken  with 
the  Eepublican  party,  and  was  doubtless,  in  his  heart 
at  least,  a  candidate  for  reelection.  "When,  therefore, 
the  universal  exasperation  of  the  Catholics  at  the  exe- 
cution of  Mrs.  Surratt  .  .  .  smote  clamorously  upon 
his  ears,  knowing  as  he  did  the  vast  political  power  of 
this  religious  sect,  his  startled  ambition  grew  sore 
afraid."  This  hypothesis  was  so  incompatible  with 
the  known  circumstances  of  the  period  to  which  it 
refers,  that  the  friends  and  backers  of  the  accused 
offender  were  forced  to  discard  it  and  provide  a  sub- 
stitute, the  chief  merit  of  which  was  that  it  stripped 
the  original  of  every  vestige  of  plausibility.  Accord- 
ing to  their  theory,  Johnson's  pet  ambition  is  still  to 

*  Note  m  to  this  chapter  in  Appendix. 


PETITION    FOR   COMMUTATION         253 

be  elected  President — not  by  the  Republican  party, 
however,  but  by  its  opponent,  and,  the  rumor  being 
rife  that  five  members  of  the  commission  recom- 
mended that  Mrs.  Surratt's  death  sentence  be  com- 
muted, influential  members  of  the  Democratic  party, 
both  North  and  South,  and  the  Catholics  all  over  the 
land,  ' '  called  upon  him  with  a  loud  voice  to  know  why 
he  had  not  heeded  the  appeal  for  mercy."  Here  was 
a  sufficient  motive,  not,  as  Holt  charged  to  fabricate 
the  lie,  but  to  father  it  after  it  had  been  fabricated  by 
others.  Still,  even  yet,  Johnson's  ''ambition"  was 
not  sufficiently  "startled"  to  force  him  into  the  open; 
he  dared  do  no  more  than  whisper  his  apology  in  a 
corner,  being  silly  enough  to  imagine  he  could  pro- 
pitiate the  Catholics  by  playing  "the  juggler  behind 
the  screen"  in  front  of  which  "his  puppets  were 
dancing."*  Even  when  his  name  was  brought  before 
the  Democratic  National  Convention,  even  when  can- 
vassing in  Tennessee  for  the  Senate,  he  has  not  the 
courage  to  play  his  card.  At  length,  long  after  every 
chance  of  being  President  is  gone,  and,  then,  only  in 
pursuance  of  the  loud  challenge  of  his  adversary,  he 
is  forced  into  the  lists.  But  he  comes  not  as  a  cham- 
pion unknown  and  unnamed;  he  comes  "with  banner, 
brand  and  bow  as  leader  seeks  his  mortal  foe."  He 
utters  no  word  in  palliation,  excuse  or  deprecation. 
He  indulges  in  no  shudder  over  the  victims  of  his  pen. 
He  defends  his  disregard  of  the  habeas  corpus.  The 
woman  whom  he  hurried  to  the  gallows  he  classes 
with  "President  Lincoln's  assassins."     Nay,  he  does 

*  Note  IV  to  this  chapter  in  Appendix. 


ft 
1 


254  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

not  even  plead  that  his  course  might  have  been  differ- 
ent had  the  petition  been  brought  to  his  knowledge. 
He  is  careful  to  go  no  further  than  to  state  that,  if 
Holt's  and  Bingham's  names  had  been  affixed  to  it, 
*'such  an  application  would  have  been  duly  weighed 
by  the  executive  before  final  action  in  the  premises." 
The  judge  advocate,  on  the  other  side,  presses  the 
question:  "What  motive  had  I  to  do  the  deed  of  mur- 
derous perfidy  alleged  against  me?" — to  which  an 
intelligent  answer  cannot  be  given  until  we  define  what 
the  deed  alleged  against  him  precisely  was.  It  was 
not  charged  that,  when  he  carried  the  record  to  the 
President,  he  left  the  petition  behind.  Johnson's 
statement  that  a  careful  scrutiny  two  years  after- 
wards convinced  him  that  the  recommendation  was 
not  with  the  record  when  presented  to  him  is  a  mere 
matter  of  inference  from  the  aspect  of  the  roll. 
Neither  was  he  accused  of  not  broaching  the  question 
of  clemency  to  the  prisoner  on  account  of  her  sex ;  for 
both  parties  agree  that  there  was  a  consultation  on 
the  subject.  The  head  and  front  of  his  offending  was 
that,  while  conferring  with  the  President  about  the 
case,  he  did  not  call  the  latter 's  attention  to  the  recom- 
mendation. And  this  simple  act  of  nonfeasance  the 
judge  advocate  gives  us  good  reason  to  believe  he 
regarded  as  no  **deed  of  murderous  perfidy."  Hold- 
ing, as  he  says  he  did,  that  "recommendations  to 
mercy  by  members  of  military  courts  do  not  in  law 
constitute  any  part  of  the  records"  he  did  not  con- 
sider himself  under  any  obligation  to  call  particular 
attention  to  such  an  unimportant  addendum.    As  he 


PETITION    FOR   COMMUTATION         255 

says,  *'If  being  there,  the  President  did  not  examine 
it,  .  .  .  the  responsibility  for  such  remissness  cer- 
tainly would  not  rest  on  me."  Again:  ''My  duty  and 
connection  with  them  (that  is,  the  record  and  recom- 
mendation) ended  on  laying  them  before  the  Presi- 
dent." In  fact,  no  overt  act  was  necessary  to  the 
suppression  of  the  paper.  Silence  was  in  itself 
suppression. 

The  precise  dimensions  of  the  delinquency  being 
thus  marked  out,  the  motive  is  clear  as  day.  It  stares 
out  at  us  from  every  step  of  the  military  procedure 
from  the  woman's  arraignment  with  seven  male  cul- 
prits to  the  hour  of  the  judge  advocate's  departure  by 
the  private  entrance  to  the  White  House  with  the  last 
hope  of  the  trembling  widow  clutched  in  his  furtive 
hand.  In  truth,  the  petition  was  substituted  for  a 
regular  sentence  to  life  imprisonment  for  the  very 
reason  that  the  one  might  be  easily  got  rid  of  and  the 
other  could  not  be  got  rid  of  save  by  the  disapproval 
of  the  commander-in-chief.  The  resolve  of  the  War 
Department  that,  in  default  of  the  appearance  of  her 
fugitive  son,  Mary  E.  Surratt  must  die,  constituted  a 
sufficient  motive  to  intercept  the  clemency  of  the  ma- 
jority of  the  court  and  to  hoodwink  the  clemency  of 
the  executive. 


L 'ENVOY 

And  thus  the  whirligig  of  Time  brings  in  his  revenges 

The  Great  Conspiracy  postulated  by  the  military 
commission,  it  is  now  conceded,  never  had  an  exist- 
ence other  than  imaginary,  and  every  person  found 
guilty  of  being  a  party  to  it  stands  acquitted  by  public 
opinion — save  the  four  who  perished  on  the  scaffold. 
Jefferson  Davis  and  the  Confederate  agents  were  not 
tried  at  all.  Davis  outlived  the  charge,  and  statues 
have  been  erected  to  his  memory  around  the  base  of 
which  soldiers  of  the  Union  and  soldiers  of  the  Con- 
federacy mingled  their  applause.  When  Thompson 
died,  the  flag  of  the  United  States  was  lowered  at  half- 
mast  over  the  Department  of  the  Interior  in  honor  of 
him  who  once  had  been  its  head.  Clay  anticipated  in 
his  lifetime  the  vindication  published  by  his  widow 
after  his  death.  Surratt  still  lives  in  the  full  enjoy- 
ment of  his  rights  as  a  citizen.  The  convicts  who 
were  sent  to  the  Dry  Tortugas  were  pardoned  by 
President  Johnson  before  the  expiration  of  his  term, 
except  the  one  who  died  in  the  meantime;  and  their 
pardon,  as  well  as  the  discharge  of  Surratt,  passed 
without  a  ripple  upon  the  surface  of  human  affairs, 
although,  according  to  the  evidence,  they  were  parties 
to  a  plot  which  the  prosecuting  officers  insisted  was 
but  a  preparatory  step  to  the  assassination. 

It  remains  to  pass  judgment  upon  the  woman  whose 
life  a  majority  of  the  commission  was  inclined  to 

(256) 


L 'ENVOY  257 

spare  and  who,  if  her  life  had  been  spared,  might  have 
been  freed  with  her  fellow-prisoners  and  restored  to 
her  children.  The  guilt  of  her  companions  in  death 
was  virtually  undisputed.  Her  own  was  never  more 
than  a  matter  of  conjecture ;  resting  wholly  on  the  tes- 
timony of  two  witnesses  swearing  against  her  in  peril 
of  their  lives  and  whose  evidence,  even  if  credited,  is 
not  irreconcilable  with  innocence.  That,  if  she  had 
been  awarded  a  trial  by  jury,  she  would  not  have  been 
convicted  will  not  be  denied.  The  trial  actually 
awarded  her  was  not  only  unconstitutional  and  illegal, 
it  was  not  even  fair.  She  was  tried,  convicted  and 
executed  in  the  place  of  another  who,  when  afterwards 
caught,  though  tried,  was  not  convicted  or  executed; 
and  about  her  scaffold  there  lingers  a  dark  suspicion 
that  her  death  sentence  was  extorted  by  one  sur- 
reptitious device  and  her  death  warrant  procured  by 
another. 

In  view  of  these  considerations  it  seems  that  the 
benefit  of  the  doubt  denied  the  woman  in  life  should 
be  given  her  in  death;  that  the  pardon  the  President, 
in  all  probability,  would  have  issued  had  she  survived 
with  Arnold  and  Spangler  and  Mudd,  should  be 
granted  to  her  memory  by  that  tribunal  whose  decrees 
are  effectual  where  executive  clemency  ceases  to  run. 

She  was  not  a  queen,  it  is  true;  and  no  Burke  has 
arisen  to  win  the  sympathies  of  the  world  by  depicting 
her  ''just  above  the  horizon,  decorating  and  cheering 
the  elevated  sphere  she  just  began  to  move  in,  glitter- 
ing like  the  morning  star,  full  of  life  and  splendor  and 
joy.*'    But  no  American  citizen,  without  first  renounc- 

17 


258  ASSASSINATION  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

ing  his  birthright,  can  allow  the  accident  of  being  but 
a  plain  woman  to  rob  her  of  rights  held  inalienable  by; 
the  Declaration  of  Independence. 

And  yet  there  is  a  feeling  predominant  in  many 
minds  that  because  the  injustice  done  her  cannot  be 
undone,  to  avow  it  is  needlessly  to  expose  the  shame 
of  one's  country;  that  because  her  fate  was  but  an 
incident  in  the  triumph  of  the  Union,  it  is  the  duty  of 
the  historian  to  let  it  sink  into  oblivion  so  that  the 
madness  that  wrought  it  may  be  remembered  no  more. 
The  present  writer  reads  history  otherwise  than  so. 
The  judicial  murder  of  a  woman  committed  in  the 
name  of  the  nation,  if  judicial  murder  it  was,  ought 
not  to  be  and,  to  the  credit  of  humanity,  cannot  be 
forgotten.  To  ask  that  it  be  buried  in  the  grave  of 
the  victim  because  of  her  lowly  station  is  an  insult  to 
the  manhood  of  the  generations  to  come. 

I  cannot  more  fitly  close  this  book  than  by  repeating 
the  words  of  England's  mighty  prophet  of  the  nine- 
teenth century: 

^^The  grand  question  still  remains,  Was  the  judgment 
justf  If  unjust,  it  will  not  and  cannot  get  harbour 
for  itself,  or  continue  to  have  footing  in  this  Universe, 
which  was  made  hy  other  than  One  Unjust.  Enforce 
it  hy  never  such  statuting,  three  readings,  •  royal 
assents;  blow  it  to  the  four  winds  with  all  manner  of 
quilted  trumpeters  and  pursuivants,  in  the  rear  of 
them  never  so  many  gibbets  and  hangmen,  it  will  not 
stand,  it  cannot  stand.  From  all  souls  of  men,  from 
all  ends  of  Nature,  from  the  Throne  of  God  above, 
there  are  voices  bidding  it:  Aivay!  Away!'* 


APPENDIX 

NOTES  TO  CHAPTER  I 

NOTE  I.     (pp.  3,  6) 

For  these  and  following  particulars,  see  Passages,  Incidents  and 
Anecdotes  iii  the  Life  of  Junius  Brutus  Booth  (the  Elder)  by  his 
daughter  (Carleton,  N.  Y.,  1866)  ;  The  Elder  and  the  Younger  Booth 
(Jas.  R.  Osgood  and  Co.,  1882);  Macready's  Eem.,  100-3,  126  and  149. 

In  the  introduction  to  the  first-mentioned  work  his  daughter  states: 

"Of  my  father's  family  there  were  ten  children,  five  of  whom  are 
living — Junius,  Rosalie,  Edwin,  Asia  and  Joseph.  By  a  boyish 
mesalliance,  contracted  in  Brussels  in  the  year  1814,  there  was  one  son, 
who,  if  alive,  is  a  resident  of  London,  and  of  whom  we  have  no  further 
knowledge. ' ' 

By  comparison  of  this  last  piece  of  information  with  the  early  tour 
of  the  Low  Countries  and  the  public  marriage  in  London,  related  in  the 
body  of  the  work,  the  reader  may  be  able  to  weigh  the  amount  of  credence 
to  be  given  to  the  scandal  put  in  the  mouth  of  one  of  the  characters  in 
Katy  of  Catoctin  (at  p.  471),  and  backed  up  by  a  note  (p.  472)  making 
a  general  reference  to  court  records,  newspapers,  and  correspondence 
and  containing  what  purports  to  be  a  copy  of  a  tombstone  inscription. 

NOTE  II.     (pp.  8,  197-8) 

ON   THE   ALLEGED   POISON    PLOT 

In  a  paper  entitled  "Four  Lincoln  Conspiracies,"  contributed  to  the 
Century  Magazine  for  April,  1896,  Victor  Louis  Mason  accepts  as 
authentic  the  story  that  Booth  while  playing  at  Meadville,  Pa.,  scratched 
on  a  window  pane  of  the  room  he  occupied  in  the  McHenry  House  at 
that  place  the  inscription:  "Abe  Lincoln  Departed  this  Life  August 
13th,  1864  By  the  Effects  of  Poison";  and  adds  that,  though  discovered 
' '  the  next  morning  "  "  after  Booth  had  left  the  hotel  and  city, "  "  little 
attention  was  paid  to  the  writing  at  the  time,"  but  as  soon  as  the 
assassination  was  heard  of — eight  months  after — "the  glass  was  re- 
moved from  its  sash,  framed  in  a  plain  black  wooden  frame,  a  piece  of 
dark  velvet  placed  on  the  back  to  facilitate  reading,  and  the  signature 
of  Booth,  entered  on  the  register  on  August  13,  was  cut  from  the  book 

(259) 


260  APPENDIX 

and  attached  to  the  window  glass."  A  photograph  of  the  pane  was 
given,  the  original,  as  the  writer  states,  having  been  presented  to  the 
War  Department  by  Miss  McHenry,  the  daughter  of  the  owner  of  the 
hotel,  "some  time  after  the  assassination." 

This  circumstantial  narrative,  backed  by  documents,  illustrates  the 
growth  of  legendary  material  around  men  and  events  celebrated  in 
history. 

I  might  have  admitted  the  tale  into  the  text  notwithstanding  no 
allusion  was  made  to  it  either  on  the  Conspiracy  Trial  or  the  Surratt 
Trial,  had  I  not  come  across  a  letter  from  the  cashier  of  the  McHenry 
House  to  Stanton,  written  so  soon  after  the  death  of  Lincoln  as  the 
twenty-fifth  of  April,  1865,  which  explained  why  the  all-devouring  war 
minister  did  not  fasten  upon  an  incident  so  relevant  if  true.  The  letter 
appears  in  Baker's  History  of  the  United  States  Secret  Service  on  pages 
547-8  and  from  it  I  give  the  following  extract: 

' '  Sometime  ago  the  following  words  were  observed  to  have  been 
scratched  upon  a  pane  of  glass,  in  room  No.  22  of  this  house,  evidently 
done  with  a  diamond":  (giving  the  inscription).  "In  view  of  recent 
events  it  was  deemed  best  to  take  the  pane  of  glass  out  and  preserve  it, 
and  we  have  it  safe.  As  to  the  date  of  the  writing,  we  cannot  determine. 
It  was  noticed  some  months  ago  by  the  house-keeper,  but  was  not 
thought  particularly  of  until  after  the  assassination,  being  considered 
a  freak  of  some  individual  who  was  probably  partially  intoxicated. 
My  theory  now  is,  that  the  words  were  written  in  prophecy  or  bravado 
by  some  villain  who  was  in  the  plot,  and  that  they  were  written  before 
the  date  mentioned,  August  13th. 

"As  to  who  was  the  writer,  we  can,  of  course,  give  no  definite  infor- 
mation, J.  Wilkes  Booth  was  here  several  times  during  last  summer 
and  fall  on  his  way  to  and  from  the  oil  regions.  He  was  here  upon  the 
10th,  and  again  upon  the  29th  of  June,  1864,  but  does  not  appear  to  have 
been  assigned  to  that  room,  still  he  may  have  been  in  it  in  company  with 
others  who  did  occupy  it" — 

and  the  writer  gives  the  names  of  four  men  to  whom  the  room  was 
assigned  on  the  10th  and  two  on  the  29th,  and  offers  to  furnish  "a  list 
of  the  persons  occupying  the  room  in  question  for  a  long  time  preceding 
the  above  date." 

The  relic  was  not  presented  to  the  War  Department  until  after  the 
lapse  of  fourteen  years — 'December  26,  1879 — when  it  was  accompanied 
by  a  letter  from  Miss  McHenry  from  Philadelphia  in  which  she  states 
that   she    "received    it"    from    Mr.    Taylor,    "the    proprietor    of    the 


APPENDIX  261 

McHenry  House"  "towards  the  end  of  April,  1865"  and  that  she  had 
had  it  in  her  possession  ever  since.  Her  statement  that  Booth  regis- 
tered at  the  hotel  on  the  thirteenth  of  August,  1864,  is  obviously  hearsay 
and  cannot  prevail  over  the  positive  testimony  of  the  cashier.  (See 
typewritten  copy  of  Miss  McHenry 's  letter  pasted  on  back  of  relic.) 

The  story  of  a  poison  plot  originated  from  two  sources — one  the 
*  *  Selby ' '  letter  in  which  occurs  the  sentence :  ' '  The  cup  failed  us  once 
and  might  again";  the  other,  a  circumstance  stated  by  Mr.  Mason  as 
follows : 

"At  the  same  time"  (i.e.,  August,  1864)  "David  E.  Herold  was  a 
drug  clerk  in  the  establishment  of  Mr.  William  S.  Thompson,  Fifteenth 
Street  and  Pennsylvania  Avenue,  near  the  White  House,  where  the 
President  was  in  the  habit  of  having  his  prescriptions  compounded ' ' — of 
which  it  suffices  to  say  that,  so  far  from  being  at  the  same  time  with 
the  window-pane  incident,  Herold 's  term  of  service,  according  to  his 
employer's  testimony  on  the  Surratt  Trial  (pages  510,  517),  ended  on 
the  4th  of  July,  1863 — more  than  a  year  before;  and  during  that  time 
he  put  up  but  one  article  for  the  President  and  that  was  a  small  vial  of 
castor  oil.  Another  druggist,  whose  shop  was  far  away  from  the  White 
House,  on  Eighth  Street,  East,  in  whose  employ  the  young  man  was  for 
eleven  months  from  October,  1863,  was  called  on  the  Conspiracy  Trial 
and  testified  to  the  character  of  his  former  clerk;  but  no  allusion  to  the 
clerkship  was  made  by  the  prosecution.     (Pitman,  96.) 

The  "Selby"  letter,  signed  Charles  Selby  and  addressed  to  "Dear 
Louis  (not  "Lewis,"  as  Mr.  Mason  has  it)  and  having  no  date,  together 
with  the  note  enclosed,  in  a  female  hand,  dated  "St.  Louis,  October  21, 
1864,"  addressed  to  "Louis"  as  "Dearest  Husband"  and  signed 
* '  Leenea, ' '  was  picked  up  b7  a  woman  in  a  street  car  in  New  York  in 
November,  1864;  being  dropped  in  an  exchange  of  letters  between  two 
men,  one  of  whom  was  disguised  by  a  false  beard.  She  took  the  letter 
and  note  in  their  envelope  to  General  Scott,  who  told  her  General  Butler 
had  left  that  morning.  She  then  gave  them  to  General  Drx,  who  trans- 
mitted them  to  the  War  Department  on  Thursday  the  17th  of  November, 
1864,  stating  that  "the  party  who  dropped  the  letter  was  heard  to  say 
he  would  start  for  Washington  Friday  night."  (Pitman,  41.)  Gen- 
eral Butler  was  ordered  to  leave  New  York  with  his  troops  on  the  11th 
of  November  (Friday),  but  on  his  own  application  was  permitted  to 
remain  until  Monday  the  14th  (id.).  The  letter  and  note  were  put  in 
evidence  on  the  Conspiracy  Trial   (Poore,  I,  27,  28),  and  the  woman 


262  APPENDIX 

testified  that  the  disguised  man's  "face  was  the  same"  as  that  of  a 
photograph  of  Booth  shown  her,  and  that  the  man  had  "a  sear  on  his 
right  cheek"  "something  like  a  bite  near  the  jawbone."  He  said  he 
would  leave  Washington  the  day  after  to-morrow.  According  to  the 
letter,  the  lot  had  fallen  upon  "Louis"  to  be  "the  Charlotte  Corday  of 
the  nineteenth  century."  "Abe  must  die  and  now."  The  writer  was 
on  his  way  to  Detroit  and  the  West. 

It  appeared  in  proof  that  Booth  left  Washington  by  an  early  train 
on  Friday  the  11th  and  returned  on  Monday  the  14th  in  the  early  part 
of  the  evening;  so  that  it  would  be  difficult  for  him  to  have  been  in  a 
street  car  in  New  York  on  Monday.  (See  N.  Y.  Herald  of  Tuesday, 
15th,  for  Butler's  order.) 

Surgeon-General  Barnes,  who  performed  the  postmortem  examination 
of  Booth's  body,  testified  that  there  was  a  "scar  upon  the  large  muscle 
of  the  neck  three  inches  below  the  ear";  and  Dr.  May,  who  was  not 
called  on  this  trial,  testified  on  the  Surratt  Trial  that  the  removal  of  a 
tumor  by  himself  had  caused  the  scar  which  was  on  the  "back  of  the 
neck  a  little  to  one  side."     (S.  T.,  270.) 

It  was  claimed  on  the  Conspiracy  Trial  that  the  Selby  letter  was 
written  to  Booth  under  the  name  of  Louis  by  some  unknown  person, 
which  was  a  natural  inference  provided  Booth  was  the  person  who 
dropped  it.  (See  argument  of  Bingham,  Pitman,  381,  382.)  But,  by 
the  date  of  the  Surratt  Trial,  that  hypothesis  had  been  discarded. 
Booth  was  now  the  writer  of  the  letter.  An  expert  from  the  telegraph 
office  of  the  War  Department  testified,  from  two  telegrams  signed  "J. 
Wilkes  Booth,"  that  the  letter,  which  he  considered  to  be  "in  a  dis- 
guised hand,"  was  in  the  handwriting  of  the  deceased  actor.  (Bates* 
testimony,  S.  T.,  506-9.)  And  Payne  was  the  "Louis"  who  was  to  be 
the  Charlotte  Corday — the  husband  of  the  heart-broken  Leenea  of  St. 
Louis.  (Argument  of  District  Attorney  on  S.  T.,  1099;  argument  of 
Pierrepont,  1306.) 

Payne,  at  the  date  of  the  note  from  "Leenea,"  was  twenty  years  of 
age  (born  in  1845) ;  had  been  in  the  Confederate  service  since  he  was 
sixteen  vmtil  he  was  taken  prisoner  at  Gettysburg,  July  3,  1863 ;  rejoined 
the  Confederate  army  in  October  of  that  year  and  remained  in  the 
service  until  January  1,  1865,  when  he  took  the  oath  of  allegiance  to  the 
United  States  under  the  name  of  Lewis  Payne.  (See  testimony  compiled 
against  Payne  in  Pitman  154  et  seq.,  and  the  argument  of  W.  E.  Doster, 


APPENDIX  263 

his  counsel,  id.,  308,  310.)     That  he  had  a  wife  and  ehUd  was  never 
heard  of  until  the  Surratt  Trial  or  that  he  had  ever  been  in  St.  Louis. 

NOTE  III.     (pp.  12,  37) 

COPY   OF   AENOIJ)'S    LETTER   TO   ME 

Ward  D,  Johns  Hopkins  Hospital, 
Baltimore, 
Me.  D.  M.  DeWitt,  Oct.  13,  1904. 

Dear  Sir: 
Yours  of  the  12th  at  hand.  As  I  will  be  operated  on  to-morrow  I 
hasten  to  reply,  giving  you  from  memory  all  the  knowledge  I  possess 
concerning  your  questions.  The  American  having  copyrighted  my  arti- 
cle as  published,  it  became  their  sole  right,  hence  I  could  not  furnish 
you  with  a  copy  of  the  same  even  had  I  one,  without  their  sanction  for 
publication.  Booth's  first  mention  of  the  plot  to  capture  A.  Lincoln 
and  convey  him  South  to  be  held  as  an  hostage  for  the  exchange  of 
prisoners  was  in  the  month  of  August,  1864,  at  Barnum's  Hotel,  then 
located  at  the  corner  of  Fayette  and  Calvert  Streets.  O'Laughlin,  a 
friend  of  his  youth,  was  also  present  and  after  conversing  some  time 
over  the  subject,  we  both  engaged  to  enter  the  enterprise.  Wiechmann 
never  was  known  to  me  nor  did  I  ever  see  him  until  the  trial,  nor  were 
any  of  those  connected  in  the  plot  ever  known,  outside  of  J.  H.  Surratt 
under  the  name  of  Cole,  until  17th  of  March,  1865,  when  I  was  intro- 
duced to  them  at  a  meeting  and  the  only  one  ever  held,  on  the  17th 
March  at  Gatier's  Saloon,  Penn.  Ave.,  Washington.  A  few  days  after 
about  20th  March  or  thereabouts  it  was  determined  to  intercept  Lincoln 
at  the  Soldiers'  Home,  7th  Street.  All  rode  out  but  in  pairs,  O'Laughlin 
and  myself — Atzerodt  and  Payne — Booth  and  Surratt,  Herold  having 
been  sent  to  T.  B.  or  Surrattsville  to  convey  a  box  containing  carbines. 
I  never  met,  never  knew  there  was  such  a  person  as  Mrs.  Surratt  living 
in  Washington  or  even  in  the  State  of  Maryland.  The  first  I  knew  of 
her  [was]  when  her  name  appeared  in  the  Charge  and  Specifications 
before  the  Military  Court.  If  any  started  from  Mrs.  Surratt 's,  both 
myself  and  O  'Laughlin  were  perfectly  ignorant  in  the  matter.  During 
my  confinement  with  Mudd  and  Spangler  at  the  Dry  Tortugas,  both 
denied  any  connection  with  Booth.  Such  a  man  as  Spangler  I  am 
satisfied  would  never  have  been  taken  into  his  confidence.  Whether 
Booth  in  his  visits  to  that  portion  of  Maryland  ever  made  known  his 
object,  of  course  I  cannot  state.     Those  composing  the  better  class  of 


264 


APPENDIX 


people  were  all  in  favor  of  the  South,  being  slave  owners  and  if  he 
mentioned  the  fact  both  he  and  they  kept  their  own  councils. 

The  following  were  the  entire  party  connected  with  the  abductiom 
plot,  viz.:  Booth,  Payne,  Atzerodt,  Herold,  O'Laughlin  and  myself.  Th© 
plot  was  abandoned  on  or  about  the  20th  March,  1865.  I  never  saw 
Booth  after  the  31st  March,  nor  any  of  the  others  connected  therewith 
and  was  following  my  legitimate  calling,  bookkeeper  at  sutler's  store 
at  Fortress  Monroe,  a  law-abiding  citizen — when  Booth  the  madman 
thro '  emotional  insanity  committed  his  diabolical  crime  thro '  which  he 
brought  shame  and  suffering  upon  the  innocent. 

I  trust  the  information  extended  will  help  in  establishing  a  truthful 

history  in  regard  to  that  affair.     Be  just  both  to  the  living  as  well  as 

the  dead. 

Very  respectfully 

Saml.  B.  Aknold, 

The  Baltimore  American  in  1902  published  in  several  issues  a  work  of 
Arnold's,  entitled  "The  Lincoln  Plot"  (copyrighted),  republished  at 
the  same  time  by  the  New  York  Sun.  The  files  of  the  former  news- 
paper containing  the  series  were  burned  in  the  great  fire. 

On  the  9th,  10th  or  12th  of  September,  1864,  Arnold  received  a  letter 
containing  a  fifty  dollar  or  twenty  dollar  note,  probably  from  Booth. 

(Newman's  testimony,  C.  T.,  Poore,  I,  423;  Pitman,  239.) 

Arnold  died  in  the  above-named  hospital  in  1906. 


NOTE  IV.     (p.  14) 

(bunker's  mem.) 

J.  W.  B.  was  not  at  National  Hotel  during  the  month  of  October. 
He  arrived  there  Nov.  9 ;  occupied  Koom  20 ;  left  on  early  train,  morning 
of  11th. 

Arrived  again  Nov.  14  and  left  on  16th. 

His  next  arrival  was  Dec.  12;  left  Dec.  17,  morning  train.  Arrived 
again  Dec.  22;  left  24th  11:15  train.  Arrived  again  Dec.  31;.  left 
Jan.  10,  1865,  7:30  P.M.  Arrived  again  Jan.  12;  left  28th  7:30  p.m. 
train;  occupied  50 14. 

Arrived  again  Feb.  22;  occupied  Eoom  231  in  company  with  Joha 
P.  H.  Wentworth  and  John  McCullough.  .  .  .  Left  Feb.  28,  8:15  a.m. 
train,  closing  Ins  account  to  date,  inclusive.  His  name  does  not  appear 
on  the  register,  but  another  room  is  assigned  him;  and  his  account  com- 
mences March  1st  without  any  entry  upon  the  register  of  that  date. 
2nd,    3rd   and    4th  he    is   called   at    8    a.m.   21st   March    pays    $50    oa 


APPENDIX  265 

account  and  left  on  7:30  p.m.  train.     Arrived  at  March  25;  room  231; 
to  tea;  and  left  April  1st  on  an  afternoon  train. 
Arrived  again  April  8th;  room  228.     (Poore  I,  32.) 

NOTE  V.     (pp.  18,  26) 
The  Evening  Star  (Washington,  D.  C.)  of  April  20,  186.5,  published 
the  letter  with  its  history  (taken  from  the  Philadelphia  Enquirer) : 

"The  following  verbatim  copy  of  a  letter,  in  writing,  which  is  the 
hand-vsriting  of  John  Wilkes  Booth,  has  been  furnished  by  Hon.  Wm. 
Milward,  U.  S.  Marshal  of  the  Eastern  District  of  Pennsylvania.  It 
was  handed  over  to  that  ofiicer  by  John  S.  Clarke,  who  is  a  brother-in- 
law  of  Mr.  Booth.  The  history  connected  with  it  is  somewhat  peculiar. 
In  November,  1864,  the  paper  was  deposited  with  Mr.  Clarke  by  Booth, 
in  a  sealed  envelope,  'for  safe  keeping,'  Mr.  Clarke  being  ignorant  of 
the  contents.  In  January  last,  Booth  called  at  Mr.  Clarke's  house, 
asked  for  the  package,  and  it  was  given  him.  It  is  now  supposed  that 
he  took  out  the  paper  and  added  his  signature,  which  appears  to  be  in  a 
different  ink  from  that  used  in  the  body  of  the  letter  and  also  from  the 
language  employed  could  not  have  been  put  to  it  originally.  Afterwards 
he  returned  the  package  to  Mr.  Clarke  again  for  safe  keeping,  sealed 
and  bearing  the  superscription  'J.  Wilkes  Booth.'  The  enclosure  was 
preserved  by  the  family  without  suspicion  of  its  nature.  After  the 
afflicting  information  of  the  assassination  of  the  President,  which  came 
upon  the  family  of  Mr.  Clarke  with  crushing  force,  it  was  considered 
proper  to  open  the  envelope.  There  were  found  in  it  the  following 
paper,  with  some  seven-thirty  United  States  bonds,  and  certificates  of 
shares  in  oil  companies.  Mr.  Clarke  promptly  handed  over  the  paper  to 
Marshal  Milward,  in  whose  custody  it  now  remains.  From  a  perusal 
of  this  paper  it  seems  to  have  been  prepared  by  Booth  as  a  vindication 
of  some  desperate  act  which  he  had  in  contemplation;  and  from  the 
language  used  it  is  probable  that  it  was  a  plot  to  abduct  the  President 
and  carry  him  off  to  Virginia.  .  .  .  The  letter  is  as  follows: 

,  1864 

My  Dear  Sir: 

You  may  use  this  as  you  think  best.  But  as  some  may  wish  to  know 
when,  who,  and  why  as  I  know  not  how  to  direct,  I  give  it  (in  the  words 
of  your  master) — *To  whom  it  may   concern.' 

Eight  or  wrong,  God  judge  me,  not  man.  For  be  my  motive  good 
or  bad,  of  one  thing  I  am  sure,  the  lasting  condemnation  of  the  North. 


266  APPENDIX 

I  love  peace  more  than  life.  Have  loved  the  Union  beyond  expression. 
For  four  years  have  I  waited,  hoped  and  prayed  for  the  dark  clouds  to 
break  and  for  a  restoration  of  our  former  sunshine.  To  wait  longer 
would  be  a  crime.  All  hope  for  peace  is  dead.  My  prayers  have 
proved  as  idle  as  my  hopes.  God's  wUl  be  done.  I  go  to  see  and  share 
the  bitter  end. 

I  have  ever  held  the  South  were  right.  The  very  nomination  of 
Abraham  Lincoln,  four  years  ago,  spoke  plainly  war,  war,  upon  southern 
rights  and  institutions.  His  election  proved  it.  *  Await  an  overt  act. ' 
Yes,  till  you  are  bound  and  plundered.  What  folly.  The  South  was 
wise.  Who  thinks  of  argument  or  pastime  when  the  finger  of  his 
enemy  presses  the  trigger?  In  a  foreign  war,  I,  too,  could  say  'country, 
right  or  wrong.'  But  in  a  struggle  such  as  ours  (where  the  brother 
tries  to  pierce  the  brother's  heart)  for  God's  sake  choose  the  right. 
When  a  country  like  this  spurns  justice  from  her  side,  she  forfeits  the 
allegiance  of  every  honest  freeman,  and  should  leave  him,  untrammeled 
by  any  fealty  soever,  to  act  as  his  conscience  may  approve.  People  of 
the  North,  to  hate  tyranny,  to  love  liberty  and  justice,  to  strike  at  wrong 
and  oppression,  was  the  teaching  of  our  fathers.  The  study  of  our 
early  history  will  not  let  me  forget  it,  and  may  it  never. 

The  country  was  formed  for  the  white,  not  for  the  black  man.  And 
looking  upon  African  slavery  from  the  same  standpoint  held  by  the 
noble  framers  of  our  constitution,  I,  for  one,  have  ever  considered  it  one 
of  the  greatest  blessings  (both  for  themselves  and  us)  that  God  ever 
bestowed  upon  a  favored  nation.  Witness  heretofore  our  wealth  and 
power;  witness  their  elevation  and  enlightenment  above  their  race  else- 
where. I  have  lived  among  it  most  of  my  life,  and  have  seen  less  harsh 
treatment  from  master  to  man  than  I  have  beheld  in  the  North  from 
father  to  son.  Yet,  Heaven  knows,  no  one  would  be  willing  to  do  more 
for  the  negro  race  than  I,  could  I  but  see  the  way  to  still  better  their 
condition. 

But  Lincoln 's  policy  is  only  preparing  a  way  for  their  total  annihila- 
tion. The  South  are  not,  nor  have  they  been  fighting  for  the  continua- 
tion of  slavery.  The  first  battle  of  Bull  Run  did  away  with  that  idea. 
Their  causes  since  for  war  have  been  as  noble  and  greater  far  than  those 
that  urged  our  fathers  on.  Even  should  we  allow  they  were  wrong  at 
the  beginning  of  this  contest,  cruelty  and  injustice  have  made  the  wrong 
become  the  right,  and  they  stand  now  (before  the  wonder  and  admira- 
tion of  the  world)  as  a  noble  band  of  patriotic  heroes.  Hereafter, 
reading  of  their  deeds,  Thermopolae  will  be  forgotten. 


APPENDIX  267 

When  I  aided  in  the  capture  and  execution  of  John  Brown  (who  was 
a  murderer  on  our  Western  border  and  who  was  fairly  tried  and  con- 
victed, before  an  impartial  judge  and  jury,  of  treason,  and  who,  by  the 
way,  has  since  been  made  a  god)  I  was  proud  of  my  little  share  in  the 
transaction,  for  I  deemed  it  my  duty  that  I  was  helping  our  common 
country  to  perform  an  act  of  justice.  But  what  was  a  crime  in  poor 
John  Brown  is  now  considered  (by  themselves)  as  the  greatest  and  only 
virtue  of  the  whole  Republican  party.  Strange  transmigration.  Vice 
80  becomes  a  virtue,  simply  because  more  indulged  in.  I  thought  then  as 
now,  that  the  Abolitionists  were  the  only  traitors  in  the  land,  and  that  the 
entire  party  deserved  the  fate  of  poor  John  Brown,  not  because  they  wish 
to  abolish  slavery,  but  on  account  of  the  means  they  have  ever  endeavored 
to  use  to  effect  that  abolition.  If  Brown  were  living  I  doubt  whether 
he  himself  would  set  slavery  against  the  Union.  Most  or  many  in  the 
North  do,  and  openly  curse  the  Union,  if  the  South  are  to  return  and 
retain  a  single  right  guaranteed  to  them  by  every  tie  which  we  once 
revered  as  sacred. 

The  South  can  make  no  choice.  It  is  either  extermination  or  slavery 
for  themselves  (worse  than  death)   to  draw  from.     I  know  my  choice. 

I  have  also  studied  hard  to  discover  upon  what  grounds  the  right  of 
a  state  to  secede  has  been  denied,  when  our  very  name  United  States, 
and  the  declaration  of  independence  both  provide  for  secession. 

But  there  is  no  time  for  words.  I  write  in  haste.  I  know  how 
foolish  I  shall  be  deemed  for  undertaking  such  a  step  as  this,  where,  on 
the  one  side,  I  have  many  friends  and  everything  to  make  me  happy, 
where  my  profession  alone  has  gained  me  an  income  of  more  than  twenty 
thousand  dollars  a  year,  and  where  my  great  personal  ambition  in  my 
profession  has  such  a  great  field  for  labor.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
South  have  never  bestowed  upon  me  one  kind  word;  a  place  now  where 
I  have  no  friends,  except  beneath  the  sod;  a  place  where  I  must  either 
become  a  private  soldier  or  a  beggar.  To  give  up  all  of  the  former  for 
the  latter,  besides  my  mother  and  my  sisters,  whom  I  love  so  dearly 
(although  they  so  widely  differ  with  me  in  opinion)  seems  insane;  but 
God  is  my  judge.  I  love  justice  more  than  I  do  a  country  that  disowns 
it,  more  than  fame  and  wealth;  more  (Heaven  pardon  me  if  wrong), 
more  than  a  happy  home. 

I  have  never  been  upon  a  battle  field;  but  O  my  countrymen,  could 
you  all  see  the  reality  or  effects  of  this  horrid  war,  as  I  have  seen  them 
(in  every  State,  save  Virginia)  I  know  you  would  think  like  me,  and 
would  pray  the  Almighty   to  create  in  the  Northern  mind  a  sense  of 


268 


APPENDIX 


right  and  justice  (even  should  it  possess  no  seasoning  of  mercy)  and 
that  he  would  dry  up  the  sea  of  blood  between  us,  which  is  daily  grow- 
ing wider.  Alas,  poor  country.  Is  she  to  meet  her  threatened  doom? 
Tour  years  ago  I  would  have  given  a  thousand  lives  to  see  her  remain 
(as  I  had  always  known  her)  powerful  and  unbroken.  And  even  now  I 
would  hold  my  life  as  naught  to  see  her  what  she  was.  O,  my  friends, 
if  the  fearful  scenes  of  the  past  four  years  had  never  been  enacted,  or 
if  what  haa  been  was  a  frightful  dream,  from  which  we  could  now 
awake,  with  what  overflowing  hearts  could  we  bless  oiu*  God  and  pray 
for  His  continued  favor.  How  I  have  loved  the  old  flag  can  never  now 
be  known,  A  few  years  since  and  the  entire  world  could  boast  of  none 
so  pure  and  spotless.  But  I  have  of  late  been  seeing  and  hearing  of 
the  bloody  deeds  of  which  she  has  been  made  the  emblem,  and  would 
shudder  to  think  how  changed  she  has  grown.  O,  how  I  have  longed  to 
see  her  break  from  the  mist  of  blood  that  circles  round  her  folds,  spoil- 
ing her  beauty  and  tarnishing  her  honor.  But  no,  day  by  day,  has  she 
been  dragged  deeper  and  deeper  into  cruelty  and  oppression,  till  now 
(in  my  eyes)  her  once  bright  red  stripes  look  like  bloody  gashes,  on  the 
face  of  Heaven.  I  look  now  upon  my  early  admiration  of  her  glories 
as  a  dream.  My  love,  (as  things  stand  to-day)  is  for  the  South  alone. 
Nor  do  1  deem  it  a  dishonor  in  attempting  to  make  for  her  a  prisoner 
of  this  man  to  whom  she  owes  so  much  of  misery.  If  success  attends 
me,  I  go  penniless  to  her  side.  They  say  she  has  found  that  "last 
ditch"  which  the  North  has  so  long  derided,  and  been  endeavoring  to 
force  her  in,  forgetting  they  are  our  brothers,  and  that  it's  impolitic 
to  goad  on  an  enemy  to  madness.  Should  I  reach  her  in  safety  and 
find  it  true,  I  will  proudly  beg  permission  to  triumph  or  die  in  that  same 
"ditch"  by  her  side. 

A  confederate  doing  duty  upon  his  own  responsibility. 

J.  Wilkes  Booth." 


NOTE  VI.     (pp.  32,  34,  37) 

SEE  LETTER  OF   ARNOLD   GIVEN   IN   NOTE  in 

That  the  date  of  the  meeting  was  Friday,  the  17th  of  March,  further 
appears  from  the  fact  that,  according  to  every  witness  on  the  subject, 
even  Wiechmann  who  misdates  the  attempt  as  of  the  16th,  the  meeting 
was  held  on  the  same  night  that  Payne  attended  the  theatre  with  Surratt, 
and  met  Booth  in  the  box;  and  that  this  was  Friday  and  not  Wednesday 
(as  Wiechmann  puts  it)  is  rendered  certain  by  the  testimony  of  Misa 
Fitzpatrick  who  explicitly  states  that  the  morning  after  she  had  been  at 


APPENDIX  269 

the  theatre  she  went  to  Baltimore  and  was  absent  a  week.  See  Poore, 
II,  89,  185.  Also,  Arnold's  articles  in  Baltimore  American,  referred  to 
at  foot  of  Note  III,  supra,  wherein  he  states  that: 

"About  2  o'clock  (March  17,  1865)  Booth  and  Herold  met  O'Laugh- 
lin  and  myself.  Booth  stated  that  he  was  told  that  the  President  was 
going  to  attend  a  theatrical  performance  out  on  Seventh  Street,  at  a 
soldiers'  encampment  or  hospital  at  the  outer  edge  of  the  city.  Booth 
made  inquiries  at  the  Soldiers'  Home  and  learned  the  President  was  not 
there. ' ' 

And  also  that  instead  of  Lincoln  attending.  Chase  went  at  President 's 
request — obviously  a  mistake  as  Chase  was  no  longer  a  member  of  the 
cabinet. 

The  date  of  the  attempt  to  capture  is  fixed  positively  for  Monday, 
the  20th,  by  the  testimony  of  Wm.  L,  Arnold  who  saw  his  brother  on  the 
coach  leaving  for  Hookstown  from  Baltimore  on  the  21st  (see  Poore,  II, 
518;  cf.  testimony  of  Minnie  Pole  in  Poore,  III,  352;  Pitman,  241),  and 
by  the  departure  of  Lincoln  for  the  front. 

The  N.  Y.  Herald  of  Thursday,  March  23,  1865,  announces  that  Mr. 
Lincoln  and  Mrs.  Lincoln,  with  "Tad,"  went  on  the  Eiver  Queen  from 
Washington  to  City  Point  on  Wednesday,  22nd,  at  noon. 

a.  The  unreliability  of  Wiechmann  as  to  dates  is  remarkable.  Oa 
comparing  his  testimony  in  the  two  trials,  it  is  apparent  that,  with  all 
his  study  and  painstaking,  he  is  often  at  sea. 

NOTE  VII.     (pp.  37,  61) 
abnold's  letter  to  booth 

Poore,  I,  420. 
Hookstown,  Balto.  Co.,  March  27,  1865. 
Bear  John: 

Was  business  so  important  that  you  could  not  remain  in  Baltimore 
till  I  saw  you?  I  came  in  as  soon  as  I  could,  but  fotmd  you  had  gone 
to  W — n.  I  called  to  see  Mike,  but  learned  from  his  mother  he  had 
gone  out  with  you  and  had  not  returned.  I  concluded,  therefore,  that 
he  had  gone  with  you.  How  inconsiderate  you  have  been!  When  I  left 
you,  you  stated  we  would  not  meet  in  a  month  or  so;  therefore  I  made 
application  for  employment,  an  answer  to  which  I  shall  receive  during 
the  week.  I  told  my  parents  I  had  ceased  with  you.  Can  I  then,  under 
existing  circtmistances,  come  as  you  request?  You  know  full  well  that 
the  G — t  suspicions  something  is  going  on  there;  therefore,  the  under- 


270  APPENDIX 

taking  is  becoming  more  complicated.  Why  not,  for  the  present,  desist 
for  various  reasons,  which  if  you  look  into,  you  can  readily  see  without 
my  making  any  mention  thereof.  You  nor  any  one  can  censure  me  for 
my  present  course.  You  have  been  its  cause;  for  how  can  I  come  after 
telling  them  I  have  left  you?  Suspicion  rests  upon  me  now  from  my 
whole  family  and  even  parties  in  the  county.  I  will  be  compelled  to 
leave  home  anyhow,  and  how  soon  I  care  not. 

Nobody,  no  not  one,  was  more  in  for  the  enterprise  than  myself,  and 
to-day  would  be  there,  had  you  not  done  as  you  have — by  this  I  mean 
manner  of  proceeding.  I  am  as  you  well  know,  in  need.  I  am,  you 
may  say,  in  rags;  whereas  to-day  I  ought  to  be  well  clothed.  I  do  not 
feel  right  stalking  about  with  means  and  more  from  appearances  a 
beggar.  I  feel  my  dependence;  but  even  all  this  would  and  was  for- 
gotten; for  I  was  one  with  you.  Time  more  propitious  will  arrive  yet. 
Do  not  act  rashly  or  in  haste.  I  would  prefer  your  first  query  * '  Go  and 
see  how  it  will  be  taken  in  K — d, ' '  and  ere  long  I  shall  be  better  pre- 
pared to  be  again  with  you.  I  dislike  writing;  would  sooner  verbally 
make  known  my  views;  yet  your  non-writing  causes  me  thus  to  pro- 
ceed. 

Do  not  in  anger  peruse  this :  weigh  all  I  have  said ;  and  as  a  rational 
man  and  a  friend,  you  cannot  censure  or  upbraid  my  conduct.  I  sin- 
cerely trust  this,  nor  aught  else  that  shall  or  may  occur,  will  ever  be  kn 
obstacle  to  obliterate  our  former  friendship  and  attachment.  Write 
me  to  Balto.,  as  I  expect  to  be  in  about  Wednesday  or  Thursday;  or,  if 
you  can  possibly  come  on,  I  will  Tuesday  meet  you  in  Balto.  at  B — . 
Ever  I  subscribe  myself,  your   friend, 

Sam. 

Extract  from  Stanton's  telegram  to  Dix,  at  7:10  Saturday,  15  April: 

' '  It  appears  from  papers  found  in  Booth 's  trunk  that  the  murder 
was  planned  before  the  4th  of  March,  but  fell  through  then  because  the 
accomplice  backed  out  until  'Kichmond  could  be  heard  from.*  " 

NOTE   TO   CHAPTER  II 

NOTE  I.     (pp.  31,  39) 
The  testimony,  given  on  both  the  Conspiracy  and  the  Surratt  trials, 
leaves  no  room  for  the  incident  of  the  arrest  of  Booth  in  the  rotunda 
on  the  day  of  Lincoln's  second  inauguration,  related  by  Oldroyd  in  his 


APPENDIX  271 

book   on   The   Assassination,   pages   216,   217,     (Compare   testimony   of 
Chester  on  C.  T.  and  of  Wiechmann  on  S.  T.) 

The  remark  quoted  in  text  is  enough  of  itself  to  dispose  of  the  story. 
And  why  was  not  the  policeman,  who  ' '  probably  saved ' '  the  President 's 
life,  called  as  a  witness  on  the  first  trial?  If  it  be  answered  that  the 
officer  had  not  yet  recognized  the  party  he  arrested  as  the  assassin,  why 
did  he  not  give  his  testimony  on  the  Surratt  Trial,  especially  as  he  had 
been  promoted  for  his  gallant  service?  And  where  were  the  makers  of 
the  dozen  or  more  affidavits  which  form  "part  of  the  'Oldroyd  Lincoln 
Memorial  Collection'  "? 

NOTES  TO  CHAPTER  III 

NOTE  I.     (pp.  59,  198) 

In  the  New  YorTc  Sun  of  April  16,  1905,  appeared  a  statement  of 
*  *  Corporal ' '  James  Tanner  who  at  the  time  of  the  assassination  was  a 
clerk  in  the  Ordinance  Bureau  and,  having  a  knowledge  of  shorthand, 
employed  his  evenings  in  taking  down  dictation  from  the  reporters  of 
the  Senate.  Boarding  in  the  house  next  to  the  Peterson  house  on  the 
north,  he  was  in  the  death  chamber  when  the  President  passed  away. 
At  the  hour  the  fatal  shot  was  fired  he  was  at  Grover  's  theatre ;  and  he 
quotes  from  a  letter,  written  to  his  mother  the  day  after,  the  narrative 
of  what  followed: 

"Shortly  after  10  o'clock,  while  in  the  midst  of  a  scene,  the  entrance 
door  of  Grover 's  was  thrown  open  and  a  man  shouted:  'President  Lin- 
coln has  been  shot  in  his  private  box  at  Ford 's !  Turn  out ! '  Instantly 
all  was  confusion.  I  cried  out:  '  It  is  a  ruse  of  the  pickpockets!  Sit 
down !  '  Most  of  the  audience  agreed  to  this  and  took  their  seats.  The 
son  of  one  of  the  actors,  who  had  recited  a  patriotic  poem  on  the  stage, 
came  from  behind  the  scenes  and  announced  that  the  terrible  news  was 
too  true,  and  the  audience  dispersed.  My  friend  and  myself  went  up  to 
Willard  's  to  learn  what  we  could.  We  were  still  more  horror  stricken 
on  coming  from  the  theatre  to  hear  it  said  that  Secretary  Seward  had 
had  his  throat  cut  in  his  bed  at  home.  We  could  learn  nothing  at  Wil- 
lard's  hotel,  we  got  on  the  cars  and  went  down  to  Tenth  Street  and 
came  up  to  my  boarding  house.  The  President  had  been  removed  from 
his  box  at  the  theatre  to  a  house  across  the  street  which  adjoins  this. 
The  crowd  was  very  great,  and  yet  what  excitement  there  was!    Any 


272  APPENDIX 

one  whispering  a  word  in  justification  of  the  deed  in  the  least  degree 
^ould  have  been  torn  to  pieces  in  a  moment." 

He  continues: 

"On  my  statement  to  the  officer  in  command  of  the  guard  that  I 
lived  in  the  house  next  door,  I  was  passed  through  the  lines  and  went  up 
to  my  rooms.  The  parlor  and  bedroom  I  occupied  comprised  the  second 
story  front.  There  was  a  balcony  there,  and  I  found  my  rooms  and 
the  balcony  crowded  with  the  other  residents  of  the  house.  Albert 
Daggett,  the  late  postal  card  contractor,  was  at  the  time  a  clerk  in  the 
State  Department  and  boarded  in  the  same  house.  Daggett  was  out 
on  the  balcony  when  Gen.  C.  C.  Augur  came  out  of  the  Peterson  house 
and  asked  if  there  was  any  one  present  who  could  write  shorthand. 
Daggett  told  him  there  was  a  young  man  inside  (meaning  myself),  who 
could  do  it,  and  Gen.  Augur  told  him  to  ask  me  to  come  down,  as  they 
wanted  me.     I  came  down  at  once  and  entered  the  Peterson  house. 

"Gen.  Augur  conducted  me  into  the  rear  parlor,  where  I  found 
Secretary  Stanton,  sitting  on  one  side  of  the  small  library  table  and 
Chief  Justice  Carter  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  District  at  the  end. 
They  had  started  in  to  take  what  testimony  they  could  regarding  the 
assassination,  having  some  one  write  it  out  in  longhand.  This  had 
proved  unsatisfactory,  I  took  a  seat  opposite  the  Secretary  and  com- 
menced to  take  down  the  testimony.  Somewhere,  stowed  away  in  my 
boxes,  I  have  the  original  shorthand  notes  which  I  made  on  that  table, 
and  the  longhand  copy  which  I  wrote  out  before  leaving  the  Peterson 
house.  We  had  Harry  Hawk,  who  had  been  on  the  stage;  Laura  Keene 
and  various  others  before  us.  No  one  said  positively  that  the  assassin 
was  John  Wilkes  Booth,  but  all  thought  it  was  he.  It  was  evident  that 
the  horror  of  the  crime  held  them  back.  They  seemed  to  hate  to  think 
that  one  they  had  known  at  all  could  be  guilty  of  such  an  awful  crime. 
Many  distinguished  people  came  in  during  the  night.  Our  work  was 
often  interrupted  by  reports  coming  in  to  Secretary  Stanton  and  faiore 
often  interrupted  by  him  when  he  halted  the  testimony  to  give  orders. 
Through  all  that  awful  night  Stanton  was  the  one  man  of  steel. 

' '  I  finished  transcribing  my  notes  at  6 :  45  A.M.  and  then  passed  back 
to  the  room  in  the  L  where  the  President  was  dying." 

Compare  with  Nicolay  and  Hay,  "Life  of  Lincoln,"  in  Century  for 
January,  1890. 


APPENDIX  273 

NOTE  II.     (p.  62) 

Even  on  a  matter  so  insusceptible,  one  would  think,  of  mistake  aa 
the  course  of  the  ball,  there  is  discrepancy  in  the  testimony. 

The  only  witness  concerning  the  autopsy  sworn  on  the  Conspiracy 
Trial  was  Kobert  K.  Stone,  the  family  physician  who  reached  the 
patient  shortly  after  he  was  laid  on  the  bed. 

He  testifies  (Poore,  I,  249;  Pitman,  81): 

"The  next  day,  previous  to  the  process  of  embalmment,  with  Dr. 
Curtis  and  Dr.  Woodward  of  the  army  and  in  the  presence  also  of 
Surgeon-General  Barnes,  the  examination  was  made.  We  traced  the 
wound  through  the  brain ;  and  the  ball  was  found  in  the  anterior  part  of 
the  same  side  of  the  brain,  the  left  side." 

On  the  other  hand,  Barnes  was  the  first  witness  on  the  Surratt  Trial 
and  the  only  one  as  to  proof  of  death.  (S.  T.,  121-3.)  He  testified 
that  '  *  the  ball  entered  the  skull  to  the  left  of  the  middle  line  of  the 
head  and  below  the  line  of  the  ear.  It  ranged  forward  and  upward 
toward  the  right  eye,  lodging  within  half  an  inch  of  that  organ."  The 
post  mortem  was  made  by  Dr.  Woodward,  his  assistant,  by  his  orders. 
Dr.  Stone  was  present.  The  ball  "was  found  .  .  .  behind  the  orbit  of 
the  right  eye  and  buried  in  the  brain."  Baker  (History  of  U.  S.  Sec- 
ret Service,  468)  says  "right  eye."     Oldroyd,  41,  the  same. 

"Life  of  Lincoln"  by  Nicolay  and  Hay  (in  Century  Magazine  for 
January,  1890),  left  eye. 

If  Ferguson  in  his  testimony  on  the  Conspiracy  Trial  is  correct  in  his 
statement  of  the  position  of  the  President  at  the  moment  the  shot  was 
fired,  this  shows  that  the  course  of  the  ball  must  have  been  diagonal 
and  that  Barnes  is  correct,  (See  Poore,  190-1;  S.  T.,  129.  See  Dr. 
Abbott's  minutes  of  last  hours  in  Oldroyd,  32,  and  in  Baker,  467.  See 
also  statement  of  Maunsell  B.  Field,  asst.  sec.  of  state,  in  Baker,  468- 
470.) 

I  have  seen  it  stated  somewhere  that  the  President  was  conscious  at 
moments  after  the  shot,  but  I  have  lost  the  reference. 

NOTE  III.     (pp.  65,  201) 

ON    MES.    SUBRATT'S   NON-EECOGNITION   OF  PAYNE 

The  version  of  the  occurrences  at  Mrs.  Surratt 's  on  the  night  of  her 
arrest  and  the  coming  of  Payne  embodied  in  the  text,  is  taken  from  the 
testimony  of  Eichard  C.  Morgan,  the  first  witness  sworn  on  the  Con- 


274  APPENDIX 

Bpiracy  Trial  as  to  this  branch  of  the  case  by  the  judge  advocate.  (See 
Poore,  II,  9.)  Morgan  was  acting  as  chief  clerk  under  Colonel  Olcot, 
one  of  the  members  of  the  special  commission  sitting  at  General 
Augur's  headquarters,  who  instructed  him  to  go  to  Mrs.  Surratt's  and 
superintend  the  seizing  of  papers  and  the  arrest  of  the  iumates.  He 
knows  nothing  of  a  confrontation  of  Payne  and  Mrs.  Surratt;  on  the 
contrary,  he  states  that  she  was  in  Payne's  presence  only  when  passing 
out  of  the  door  and  "no  conversation  occurred."  He  also  states  that 
Payne  was  interrogated  after  Mrs.  S.  had  gone. 

The  confrontation  and  Mrs.  S.'s  solemn  asseveration  that  she  knew 
not  the  man  first  appear  in  the  testimony  of  Major  Henry  Warren 
Smith  on  the  same  trial.  (Poore  II,  14.)  He  claimed  to  have  been  in 
full  charge  of  the  party,  classing  Morgan  as  one  of  his  subordinates. 
According  to  his  version,  he,  instead  of  Morgan,  conducted  the  whole 
business  and,  after  interrogating  Payne,  called  Mrs.  Surratt  from  the 
parlor  and  put  the  question  to  her  to  which  she  made  so  emphatic  a 
reply. 

The  two  versions  are  absolutely  irreconcilable.  If  Morgan  told  the 
truth,  the  incident,  upon  which  great  stress  has  been  laid  as  showing 
the  complicity  of  Mrs.  Surratt,  never  took  place.  It  is  true  that  Cap- 
tain Wermerskirch  corroborates  Smith,  but,  on  the  other  hand,  Miss 
Fitzpatrick  swears  she  neither  heard  nor  saw  anything  of  the  kind; 
while  the  other  officers  present,  two  of  whom  heard  the  remark  made  by 
Mrs.  Surratt  in  passing  out  which  Morgan  failed  to  catch,  were  not 
sworn. 

Smith  was  contending  for  first  place  in  the  capture  with  an  eye  to  a 
lion's  share  of  the  reward.  A  simple  non-recognition,  such  as  might 
be  deduced  from  Morgan's  testimony,  would  have  furnished  but  little 
food  for  suspicion  and  on  this  account  was  not  enough  for  the  prosecu- 
tion. A  solemn  and  impressive  form  must  be  given  to  the  denial  to 
make  it  tell  with  deadly  effect.  And  that  Smith  was  just  the  man  to 
do  it  is  apparent  from  his  testimony  on  the  Svurratt  Trial.  There  Mor- 
gan, notwithstanding  he  strives  to  reconcile  his  testimony  as  far  as 
possible  to  that  of  his  competitor  for  public  favor,  is  obliged  to  stick 
substantially  to  his  former  version.  But  Smith  is  more  dramatic  than 
ever — ^laying  on  the  colors  and  deepening  the  shades,  especially  on  the 
points  where  he  is  most  at  war  with  his  brother  officer.  On  this  trial, 
also,  the  prosecution  fails  to  produce  the  subordinates  present  whose 
testimony  might  have  placed  the  point  in  dispute  beyond  controversy. 


APPENDIX  275 

One  thing  is  certain;  so  solemn  a  performance  as  that  narrated  by 
Major  Smith  could  not  have  been  enacted  in  that  lighted  hall  at  that 
midnight  hour  and  have  escaped  the  notice  of  Morgan;  and  Morgan,  if 
he  witnessed  it,  had  every  motive  to  relate  it  and  none  to  conceal  it. 

NOTE  IV.     (p.  80) 

This  missive  was  first  brought  to  light  in  May,  1867,  before  the 
impeachment  committee.  Holt,  who  produced  the  diary,  said  nothing 
of  it,  nor  Conger,  who  testified  that  the  book  was  in  his  possession  from 
the  time  he  took  it  from  Booth's  body  until  he  delivered  it  to  Stanton. 
(Imp.  Inv.,  286,  324,  329-331.)  Lieutenant  Baker,  however,  testified 
that,  about  ten  days  after  the  capture,  having  been  sent  by  Stanton  in 
search  of  further  information,  he  ascertained  that  Booth  while  at  Lucas' 
cabin  wrote  something  on  one  of  the  leaves  of  his  diary,  tore  the  leaf 
out,  enclosed  some  money  in  it  and  sent  it  to  Stewart  in  the  morning; 
whereupon  Baker  went  to  the  doctor's  and  got  the  note — Mrs.  Stewart 
interposing  to  prevent  the  detective  taking  it  and  finally  tearing  oflF 
the  address.  Baker  brought  the  note  to  General  Baker,  who  took  it  to 
the  War  Department  where  the  leaf  on  which  it  was  written  was  com- 
pared with  those  in  the  diary  and  so  foimd  to  have  come  from  the 
book.     (Id.,  484.) 

Major  Eckert  produced  the  note  from  a  package  in  the  War  Depart- 
ment and  it  read  as  given  in  the  text;  and  he  testified  that  the  doctor 
stated  "that  this  paper  came  to  his  house  sealed  up."  It  was  pinned 
and  bears  the  marks  of  the  pin  used  in  fastening  it.  The  address  was 
on  the  paper  itself,  and  the  money  was  rolled  up  in  it  (id,  676-7). 

There  was  another  version,  still,  in  the  diary  itself,  with  a  part  of 
the  writing  torn  off  and  the  sum  sent  stated  to  be  five  dollars — showing 
that  Booth  wrote  first  a  note  purporting  to  enclose  $5 ;  and  then,  conclud- 
ing to  reduce  the  amount  to  $2.50,  wrote  another  which  was  sent,  the 
original  being  left  in  the  book. 

This  latter  was  introduced  on  the  Surratt  Trial  (p.  402),  and  may  be 
collated  with  the  other.  The  most  material  variation,  other  than  the 
money  statement,  is  that  it  has  no  signature,  date  or  address. 

Lieutenant  Baker  was  sworn  on  that  trial  (320-1)  but  makes  no 
allusion  to  the  note  produced  although  it  was  mutilated  as  he  describes. 

NOTE  V.     (p.  91) 

ON  QUKSTION:     DID  BOOTH  KILL  HIMSELF? 

The  exact  truth  concerning  the  particulars  of  the  capture  of  Booth 
and  Herold  cannot  be  ascertained  because  of  the  contradictory  char- 


276  APPENDIX 

acter  of  the  testimony  of  the  principal  witnesses — due  to  the  fierce 
strife  waged  over  the  immense  reward  offered  by  the  government.  Of 
the  persons  present — at  least  thirty  in  number — we  have  the  testimony 
of  but  five — Everton  J.  Conger  and  Luther  B.  Baker,  the  two  detectives 
whom  General  La  Fayette  C.  Paker,  the  planner  of  the  expedition,  put 
in  command;  Edward  P.  Doherty,  the  captain  of  the  squad  of  cavalry 
detailed  for  the  service;  Boston  Corbett,  the  first  sergeant  of  the  com- 
pany; and  John  W.  Garrett,  the  son  of  the  owner  of  the  place  where 
the  fugitives  were  brought  to  bay.  Conger,  Doherty  and  Corbett  were 
sworn  before  the  military  commission  which  met  less  than  two  weeks 
after  the  capture;  Doherty 's  testimony  being  directed  by  the  judge 
advocate  principally  to  the  surrender  of  Herold,  for  which  the  captain 
claimed  the  sole  credit,  and  Corbett 's  to  the  circumstances  leading  up 
to  the  firing  of  his  shot.  Conger  was  the  witness  the  prosecution  relied 
on  for  the  particulars  of  the  pursuit  and  capture;  L.  B.  Baker,  whose 
deposition  had  been  taken  by  Judge  Holt  immediately  on  his  arrival 
■with  the  body  on  board  of  the  monitor,  though  he  was  in  attendance, 
not  being  called. 

In  December,  1865,  Conger  and  L.  B.  Baker  made  a  verified  joint 
report  to  the  Secretary  of  War,  which  was  transmitted,  with  the  report 
of  their  chief,  and  is  contained  in  the  History  of  the  United  States 
Secret  Service  published  by  the  latter  officer,  at  page  532.  In  it  they 
refer  to  statements  taken  by  them  from  the  fisherman,  Eollins,  from 
the  two  young  Garretts,  and  also  the  deposition  of  Baker  taken  by 
Judge  Holt — all  on  file  in  the  War  Office,  but  never  published.  Conger 
and  Baker  gave  testimony  before  the  judiciary  committee  of  the  House 
of  Representatives  on  the  Impeachment  Investigation  of  1867,  and  on 
the  Surratt  Trial  occurring  subsequently  in  the  same  year,  but  Doherty 
and  Corbett  were  sworn  on  neither  proceeding.  Garrett  was  sworn  on 
the  Surratt  Trial  alone. 

The  feud  over  the  distribution  of  the  rewards  had  not  transpired  in 
public  at  the  date  of  the  military  commission,  though  unmistakable 
traces  of  its  existence  were  visible  in  the  pointblank  contradictions  dis- 
figuring the  evidence  of  Conger  and  Doherty — both  witnesses  strenu- 
ously contending  for  primacy  in  the  expedition.  But  it  burst  forth  in 
full  virulence  before  the  commission  appointed  by  the  Secretary  of  War 
to  hear  the  claimants,  consisting  of  Judge-advocate  Holt  and  Adjutant- 
general  Townsend — a  commission  which,  while  it  conceded  that  the 
expedition  "was  originated,  planned  and  generally  directed  by  CoL 
L.  C,  Baker,"  awarded  that  irate  officer  but  $3,000;  awarded  Conger 


APPENDIX  277 

4,000;  L.  B.  Baker,  $4,000;  and  Doherty,  $7,500."  The  war  was  then 
carried  before  the  committee  on  claims  of  the  House  of  Representa- 
tives, where  in  the  spring  of  1866  some  startling  disclosures  were  made. 
Doherty,  who  claimed  that  he  was  in  sole  command  of  the  party — the 
two  detectives,  like  his  own  men,  being  mere  subordinates — was  de- 
nounced on  the  floor  by  the  chairman  of  the  committee  as  having  acted 
as  "a  downright  coward,"  hiding  under  a  shed  and  shirking  his  duty 
until  he  was  ordered  to  the  rear;  his  men  "lying  around  under  the 
apple  trees  and  elsewhere,"  all  but  six  of  them  refusing  to  come  within 
thirty  feet  of  the  warehouse  and  sit  upon  rails  placed  at  that  distance 
by  Conger.  Corbett,  one  of  the  six,  the  chairman  stated  was  "an  insane 
man"  who  "'forsook  his  place,"  "thrust  a  pistol  through  a  crack  and 
fired  it  without  knowing  where  the  ball  was  going,"  because,  as  he 
himself  said,  "Providence  directed  him  to  do  so."  On  the  other  hand, 
nothing  but  good  was  shown  or  said  of  Conger.  To  him  was  com- 
mitted the  execution  of  the  plan,  and  to  him  and  his  lieutenant  was 
"due  the  entire  credit  of  capturing  the  criminal  in  the  warehouse.** 
The  chairman  pronounced  him  to  be  "as  brave  and  gallant  a  soldier  aa 
any  who  fought  in  our  army."  "He  was  shot  twice  through  the  hips 
and  was  now  dragging  a  withered  limb."  Another  member  spoke  of 
him  as  "really  a  noble,  high-toned  gentleman" — "the  active  man  in 
the  whole  affair."  Sherman,  in  the  Senate,  pointed  him  out  sitting  in 
the  gallery,  "two  wounds  upon  hig  body,  pale  and  emaciated,  not  five 
dollars  in  his  pocket,"  "waiting  for  his  pay."  The  committee  gave 
General  Baker  $17,500;  Conger  the  same  sum;  L.  B.  Baker,  $5,000; 
Doherty  $2,500.  In  the  House  the  main  fight  was  over  the  amount 
awarded  to  the  chief  of  the  detective  force;  and  the  bill,  as  passed,  to 
his  unutterable  disgust,  gave  him  but  $3,750.  Conger  received  $15,000; 
Doherty,  $5,250;  L.  B.  Baker,  $3,000;  Corbett  and  the  other  cavalrymen 
$1,653.48  each.  (Act  approved  July  28th,  1866.  App.  of  Globe,  Ist 
Sess.,  39th  Cong,,  p.  423.     Debate,  Globe  id.,  4183-90-1.) 

Conger  and  Baker  were  the  main  witnesses  on  this  branch  of  the  case 
on  the  Im.peachment  Investigation  and  the  Surratt  Trial — the  former 
was  conceded  the  primacy  in  the  pursuit,  the  latter  dividing  it  with  him 
in  the  capture;  Garrett,  as  far  as  his  testimony  went,  corroborating 
Baker.  Indeed  the  last-mentioned  officer,  if  we  except  his  cousin,  the 
general,  who  took  no  active  part  in  the  execution  of  the  plan  he  con- 
ceived and,  therefore,  in  this  instance  had  no  opportunity  to  exhibit  his 
unrivaled  powers  when  under  oath — was  the  most  ill-used  witness  in  the 


278  APPENDIX 

whole  proceeding.  He  undoubtedly — ^his  colleague  yielding  the  palm 
to  him — took  the  lead  from  the  moment  the  warehouse  was  surrounded; 
parleying  with  Booth  and  conducting  every  movement  except  the  plac- 
ing of  the  men  and  the  setting  fire  to  the  barn.  If  we  except  Corbett, 
he  was  the  sole  witness  to  Booth's  fall.  He  was  the  first  to  catch  the 
fallen  man,  to  twist  the  pistol  out  of  his  clenched  hand  and  consequently 
to  discern  whether  the  condition  of  the  weapon  corresponded  with  the 
condition  of  the  wound.  He  took  charge  of  the  body  until  it  was  deliv- 
ered to  his  chief  on  board  of  the  monitor,  and  he  relates  an  incident  as 
occurring  during  this  interval  which,  it  must  be  confessed,  strains  his 
credibility  to  the  limit.  He  tells  us  that,  starting  ahead  of  the  cavalcade, 
alone  in  the  wagon  with  the  darkey  driver,  he  got  astray,  and,  after 
traveling  all  day,  struck  the  river  three  miles  above  the  rendezvous  and 
had  to  conceal  the  corpse  in  the  bushes,  while  (leaving  the  negro  on 
watch)  he  drove  down  the  river  until  he  found  a  boat  in  which  he 
rowed  back  and  brought  the  body  to  the  steamboat.  Still,  on  the 
whole,  his  two  narratives  give  the  most  graphic,  the  clearest  and  the 
most  intelligent  account  of  the  expedition.  For  some  reason  he  was 
under  the  frown  of  the  mighty  Bureau  of  Military  Justice.  His  depo- 
sition— the  earliest  of  all — taken  by  Holt  in  the  hold  of  the  monitor, 
when  wanted  before  the  committee  on  claims,  could  not  be  found.  He 
suspected  that  he  was  not  called  on  the  Conspiracy  Trial  because  of 
some  "foul  play"  in  favor  of  Conger  and  Doherty.  His  first  impres- 
sion when  Booth  fell  was  that  Conger  shot  him;  his  second,  that  if 
Conger  shot  him  "it  better  not  be  known."  Conger's  "first  impression 
was  that  Booth  shot  himself — an  impression  confirmed  by  his  examina- 
tion of  the  wound.  His  second  may  have  been  that,  if  Booth  shot  him- 
self, "it  better  not  be  known"  and  his  colleague  may  have  agreed  with 
him.  If  so,  Corbett  relieved  them  from  the  necessity  of  any  further 
deliberation,  and  neither  was  ever  assured  by  competent  authority  that 
their  share  of  the  reward  would  not  be  lessened  if  they  discarded  policy 
and  declared  the  truth. 

As  for  Doherty,  after  he  went  home  with  his  share  of  the  spoil,  we 
have  no  record  of  him  for  twenty-four  years,  when,  in  the  January  num- 
ber of  the  Century  Magazine  for  the  year  1890,  a  paper  appeared  giving 
an  account  of  the  pursuit  and  death  of  Booth,  signed  with  his  name,  in 
which  he  claims  everything  in  sight.  He  it  was  who  obtains  from  Rol- 
lins the  information  concerning  the  fugitives.  He  it  was  who  arrests 
Jett.  He  seizes  old  man  Garrett.  He  parleys  with  Booth.  He  catches 
the  falling  man  when  Corbett  fires  to  disable  him  lest  he  shoot  Doherty. 


APPENDIX  279 

He  ministers  to  the  captive  when  he  revives.  He  sews  up  his  body  in 
his  own  blanket,  carries  it  and  Herold  to  Washington  and  delivers  both 
on  board  the  monitor — in  each  and  every  one  of  which  particulars  he 
runs  counter  to  the  pointblank  testimony  of  both  Conger  and  Baker, 
supported  as  they  are  by  Garrett. 

On  the  whole,  a  perusal  of  the  testimony  that  has  come  down  to  us 
gives  a  sickening  sense  of  the  unreliability  of  witnesses  when  striving 
with  each  other  for  the  biggest  share  of  a  large  reward.  Every  one 
appears  unable  to  resist  the  temptation  to  magnify  his  own  exploits  at 
the  expense  of  those  of  his  competitors.  In  the  clouds  of  dust  raised 
by  the  ignoble  contention,  the  truth  is  either  obscured  beyond  recogni- 
tion or  disappears  altogether. 

And,  therefore,  the  authorities  were  all  the  more  inexcusable  for  al- 
lowing the  matter  to  rest  in  such  exasperating  dubiety. 

The  rumor  of  suicide  was  abroad.  The  truth  of  the  matter  could 
have  been  established  without  difficulty.  If  Corbett  fired  the  shot,  some 
of  his  comrades  must  have  witnessed  the  act;  in  fact,  he  swears  that 
one  of  them  was  watching  him  at  the  moment.  Whether  he  used  a  ear- 
bine  or  a  revolver,  is  left  uncertain.  He  swears:  "I  took  steady  aim 
on  my  arm";  which  looks  like  a  revolver;  Doherty  says  a  carbine.  He 
must  have  stood  at  least  thirty  feet  from  Booth  when  he  fired. 

The  autopsy  ought  to  have  disclosed  the  size  of  the  ball  and  whether 
it  came  from  a  revolver  or  a  carbine;  and  a  proper  inspection  of  the 
weapons — the  one  Corbett  said  he  used  and  the  one  Baker  took  from 
the  fallen  man — would  have  settled  the  question. 

Cf.  testimony  of  Baker  (L.  B.)  on  Imp.  Inv.  and  on  Surratt  Trial 
with  Conger's  on  C.  T.  See  Euggles'  narrative  in  January  Century 
(1890)  and  Doherty 's  in  same  magazine.    Also  Katy  of  Catoctin,  536.* 

*  Lieutenant  Baker  testified  on  the  Impeachment  Investigation  (p.  489)  that, 
about  two  weeka  after  the  death  of  Booth,  the  young  Garretts  eame  to  Washington 
with  an  application  for  damages,  "which  they  wanted  me  to  sign  but  I  refused 
until  I  got  all  the  things  belonging  to  Booth  which  they  had."  A  week  or  ten 
days  after  he  went  to  Garrett's  and  one  of  the  sons  brought  him  "a  piece  of 
Booth's  crutch  and  a  haversack."  A  little  boy  told  him  "that  Booth  gave  the 
opera  glass  to  his  sister,  Joanna,"  and  Baker  told  Joanna  "she  could  do  one  of 
two  things — either  produce  the  opera  glass  or  come  with"  him  "to  Washington." 
Old  Garrett  then  said  that  the  glass  was  about  nine  miles  oflf  with  another 
daughter  of  his;  and  Baker  rode  over  and  found  it  hid  in  a  clothes-chest  in  the 
«ttic.     He  tells  the  same  story  on  the  Surratt  Trial,  321-2. 


280  APPENDIX 

NOTES  TO  CHAPTER  IV 

NOTE  I.     (p.  96) 

An  article  in  Blackwood's  Magazine  for  April,  1869,  entitled  "Th« 
Out-going  and  the  Incoming  President, ' '  shows  the  contemporary  f oreiga 
view: 

"The  cruel  murder  of  Mr.  Lincoln  excited  so  violent  a  rage  against 
the  defeated  South,  whose  chiefs  and  leaders  were  stupidily  accused  by 
the  War  Secretary,  Mr.  Stanton,  of  having  abetted  and  instigated  it 
.  .  .  that  he  (Mr.  Johnson)  .  .  .  without  the  slightest  warrant  accused 
seven  high-minded  gentlemen,  as  innocent  of  murder  as  himself,  of 
complicity  in  the  foulest  crime  of  the  age." 

NOTE  II.     (p.  104) 

All  the  principal  New  York  journals  state  that  Mrs.  Surratt  waa 
ironed  about  the  ankles.  The  New  York  Times  of  the  15th  of  May, 
1865,  describing  the  scene  at  the  opening  of  the  court,  on  the  Saturday 
before,  states  as  to  Mrs.  Surratt:  "An  iron  bar  ten  inches  long  passes 
from  one  ankle  to  another  and  is  attached  to  an  iron  band  that  encircles 
€ach  leg," 

Poore,  in  his  introduction  to  "The  Conspiracy  Trial,"  says:  "All 
the  prisoners,  including  Mrs.  Surratt,  wore  anklets  connected  by  short 
chains,  which  hamper  their  walk."  General  Hunter,  as  he  waited  to 
say  until  November,  1873,  reading  in  a  morning  paper  the  day  after  the 
opening  of  the  trial  a  report  that  Mrs.  Surratt  was  heavily  ironed,  "im- 
mediately addressed"  a  note  "to  the  officer  in  charge  to  learn  if  the 
report  was  true"  and  "was  assured  it  was  false."  But  the  news- 
paper statements,  although  virtually  unanimous,  called  forth  no  public 
denial  imtU  the  fall  of  1873.  Then,  after  Holt  attacked  Andrew  John- 
son concerning  the  rumor  of  the  suppression  of  the  petition  in  favor  of 
Mrs.  Surratt,  and  was  himself  assailed  for  "keeping  that  feeble, 
wretched  woman  heavily  manacled  during  her  trial,"  he  appealed  to 
General  Hartranft — then  governor  of  Pennsylvania — who  came  for- 
ward to  his  rescue. 

Hartranft 's  denial,  having  been  delayed  so  long,  might  not  have 
been  conclusive,  had  not  the  editor  of  the  Washington  Chronicle  ad- 
dressed a  note  to  Frederick  A.  Aiken,  one  of  the  counsel  of  Mrs.  Surratt, 
who  settled  the  question  by  the  averment  that  she  was  at  no  time  man- 
acled while  in  the  presence  of  the  court. 


APPENDIX  281 

See  Holt's  letter  to  the  A^.  Y.  Tribune  dated  September  9,  1873, 
published  in  Daily  Morning  Chronicle  of  September  12,  1873,  containing 
Hartranft's;  Hunter's  in  Chronicle  of  November  9,  1873;  Aiken's  ia 
Chronicle  of  September  19. 

NOTE  HI.  (p.  110) 
General  Harris  (in  1892)  published  a  book  on  the  assassination  of 
Lincoln  [Boston  American  Citizen  Company]  of  419  pages,  in  which  he 
plumes  himself  upon  this  attack ;  representing  the  counsel,  when  he  found 
that  the  court  ' '  could  not  be  bluffed, ' '  as  coming  *  *  down  from  his  high 
horse."  The  general,  at  so  late  a  day,  is  still  thoroughly  convinced  of 
the  guilt  of  every  one  of  the  accused,  Jefferson  Davis  included,  of  the 
great  conspiracy,  not  only  but  of  all  "the  atrocities  not  embraced  in 
the  charge";  still  clinging  to  Sanford  Conover  in  the  face  of  the  con- 
fession of  that  criminal,  his  conviction  and  imprisonment  in  the  Albany 
penitentiary,  nay,  despite  his  denunciation  by  Judge  Holt. 

NOTE  IV.  (p.  115) 
The  case  was  reopened  to  introduce  an  advertisement  from  an 
Alabama  newspaper  of  December  1,  1864,  offering  for  one  million  dol- 
lars to  cause  the  lives  of  Lincoln,  Seward  and  Johnson  to  be  taken  be- 
fore the  first  of  March;  the  author  of  which  was  an  old  lawyer,  without 
a  cent  to  his  name,  who  got  up  the  card  as  a  joke  in  a  moment  of  intox- 
ication. He  was  indicted  but  pardoned  by  President  Johnson  on  the 
petition  of  the  Union  officers  and  soldiers  in  the  vicinity  of  his  home, 
the  Free  Masons  of  his  district,  and  the  governor  and  members  of  the 
legislature  of  the  reconstructed  state.     (Imp.  Inv.,  565-570.) 

NOTE  V.  (p.  120) 
The  special  detective,  who  first  had  Lloyd  in  charge,  not  being  called 
by  the  judge  advocate,  the  counsel  for  Mrs.  Surratt  sought  him  out  and 
asked  him  whether  the  prisoner  implicated  Mrs.  Surratt  in  his  confes- 
sion. The  officer  told  him  she  had  not,  and  repeated  his  negation  in  the 
court  room  just  before  he  was  called  to  the  stand.  What  was  the  coun- 
sel's astonishment  when  he  testified  to  the  direct  contrary!  Being 
called  to  account  for  his  deception  he  justified  it  as  follows:  "It  is  a 
part  of  my  business — I  am  a  detective  officer — to  gain  my  object  I  ob- 


282  APPENDIX 

tained  the  confession  from  Lloyd  through  strategy.  .  .  .  Undoubtedly 
I  told  you  a  lie  there,  for  I  thought  you  had  no  business  to  ask  me.  .  .  . 
I  told  you  you  might  call  me  into  court;  and  I  state  here  that  I  did  lie 
to  you;  but  when  put  on  my  oath  I  told  the  truth."  (Testimony  of 
Cottingham,  Poore,  II,  215.) 

NOTE  VI.  (p.  123) 
Wieehmann  left  this  visitor  unidentified  on  this  trial;  but,  about  a 
month  after,  he  had  become  convinced  he  was  Booth  (see  his  affidavit 
in  the  Appendix  to  Pitman),  and  so  testified  on  the  Surratt  Trial,  on 
which  occasion  a  colored  servant  put  Surratt  in  the  dining  room.  (See 
Chap.  Vni  on  Surratt  Trial.) 

NOTE  VII.     (p.  127) 
Bingham's  recapitulation  of  the  incidents  in  front  of  the  theatre 
immediately  preceding  the  tragedy  inside,  it  is  well  to  give,  in  view  of 
the  phase  they  assumed  on  the  Surratt  Trial: 

"Booth  passes  to  the  street  in  front  of  the  theatre  where  on  the 
pavement  with  other  conspirators  yet  unknown,  among  them  one 
described  as  a  low-browed  ^^llain,  he  awaits  the  appointed  moment. 
Booth  himself  impatient  enters  the  vestibule  .  .  .  and  asks  the  time. 
He  is  referred  to  the  clock  and  returns.  Presently,  as  the  hour  of  ten 
approached,  one  of  his  guilty  associates  called  the  time;  again  as  the 
appointed  hour  draws  nigh,  he  calls  the  time;  and  finally  when  the 
fatal  moment  arrives  he  repeats  in  a  louder  tone,  'Ten  minutes  past" 
ten  o'clock.'     'Ten  minutes  past  ten  o'clock.'  " 

This  one-sided  harangue  appears  to  have  been  considered  by  the 
Bureau  as  a  model  of  forensic  eloquence.  The  judge  advocate  appended 
it  to  the  "Brief  Keview"  of  the  testimony  submitted  to  the  President 
"because  of  the  full  and  exhaustive  examination  of  the  questions  of 
law  and  fact  to  be  found  therein";  it  was  circulated  by  order  of  the 
Secretary  of  War  throughout  every  congressional  district  in  the  coimtry 
that  the  legal  profession  might  be  furnished  with  information  necessary 
to  vindicate  the  action  of  the  government;  it  was  the  subject  of  the 
ecstatic  eulogy  of  General  Harris,  who  printed  it  in  full  in  an  appendix 
to  his  work. 


APPENDIX  283 

NOTES  TO  CHAPTER  Y 

NOTE  I.     (p.   132) 

Gardiner  in  his  History  of  England  (Vol.  I,  314)  narrates  a  some- 
what similar  incident  occurring  in  the  year  1606  in  Scotland,  King 
James,  through  his  commissioner  and  the  lords  of  the  council,  forced  a 
conviction  of  treason  against  six  ministers  of  the  kirk  from  a  jury  al- 
ready packed  for  the  purpose  but  which,  under  the  spell  of  the  address 
of  two  of  the  accused  in  person,  "Laclined  to  brave  all  threats  and  to 
acquit   the  prisoners," 

"They  not  only  tried  what  could  be  done  by  threatening  the  jury, 
but  they"  (the  lords  of  the  council)  "sent  some  of  their  number  in" 
(to  the  jury  room)  "to  assure  them  that  they  would  do  no  harm  by  con- 
victing them,  as  the  King  had  no  intention  of  pushing  matters  to 
extremes,  but  only  to  have  the  credit  of  a  verdict  on  his  side  in  order 
to  bring  about  a  pacification." 

NOTE  II.     (pp,  134,  137) 

In  the  year  1894,  while  writing  a  little  book  on  the  execution  of  Mrs. 
Surratt  (now  out  of  print)  I  went  to  the  judge  advocate  general's 
office  in  Washington  and  was  permitted  to  make  a  copy  of  the  record 
of  the  findings  and  the  sentences,  which  I  did  upon  legal-cap  paper  of 
the  kind  used  by  the  draughtsman  of  the  commission,  paragraph  by 
paragraph,  and  sheet  by  sheet,  making  it  as  near  aa  I  could  with  pen 
and  ink  a  facsimile. 

The  following  is  a  reproduction  of  the  last  half -sheet  of  the  record 
proper,  containing  the  proceedings  of  the  second  day  and  showing  the 
awkward  change  made  by  Holt,  in  the  mode  of  writing  thitherto  fol- 
lowed, when  superscribing  the  death  warrant: 


284 


APPENDIX 


[This  is  first  page  of  half -sheet] 


[In  Holt's 
Hand] 


CouRT-EooM,  Washington,  D.  C. 
June  30th,  1865,  10  o'clock  a.m. 

The  Commission  met,  with  closed  doors, 
pursuant  to  adjournment. 

All  the  members  present;  also  the 
Judge  Advocate  and  the  Assistant  Judge 
Advocates. 

The  Commission  do,  therefore,  sen- 
tence the  said  Samuel  A.  Mudd  to  be 
imprisoned  at  hard  labor  for  life,  at 
such  place  as  the  President  shall  direct. 

The  Commission  thereupon  adjourned 
sine  die. 

J.  Holt  D.  Hunter 

Executive  Mansion, 
July  5,  1865. 

The  foregoing  sentences  in  the  cases 
of  David  E.  Herold,  G.  A.  Atzerodt, 
Lewis  Payne,  Michael  O'Laughlin,  Ed- 
ward Spangler,  Samuel  Arnold,  Mary  E. 
Surratt  and  Samuel  A.  Mudd,  are  hereby 
approved,  and  it  is  ordered  that  the  sen- 
tences of  said  David  E.  Herold,  G.  A. 
Atzerodt,  Lewis  Payne,  Mary  E.  Surratt 
be  carried  into  execution  by  the  proper 
Military  Authority,  under  the  direction 
of   the    Secretary   of   War,   on   the    7th 


APPENDIX 


285 


[This  is  back  page  of  half -sheet] 


day  of  July  1865,  between  the  hoiirs  of 
10  o'clock  A.  M.  and  2  o'clock  P.  M.  of 
that  day. 

It  is  further  ordered,  that  the  prison- 
ers Samuel  Arnold,  Samuel  A.  Mudd, 
Edward  Spangler  and  Michael  O'Laugh- 
lin  be  confined  at  hard  labor  in  the 
Penitentiary  at  Albany,  New  York,  dur- 
ing the  period  designated  in  their  respec- 
tive sentences. 

Andrew  Johnson, 

President. 


[In  Holt's 
Hand] 


■     [In  Johnson's 
Hand] 


[On  a  separate  half-sheet  follows  the  petition  as  given  in  the  text] 


286  APPENDIX 

NOTE  III.     (pp.  136-7,  249) 

In  a  paper  read  to  Loyal  Legion,  April,  1889  (printed  in  appendix 
to  Harris'  Assassination),  General  Burnett  says: 

* '  Judge  Holt  came  directly  to  Mr,  Stanton 's  office  in  the  War  Depart- 
ment. I  happened  to  be  -with  Mr.  Stanton  as  Judge  Holt  came  in. 
After  greetings,  the  latter  remarked,  'I  have  just  come  from  a  confer- 
ence with  the  President  over  the  proceedings  of  the  military  commission. ' 
•Well,'  said  Mr.  Stanton,  'what  has  he  done?'  *He  has  approved  the 
findings  and  sentence  of  the  court,'  replied  Judge  Holt.  'What  did  he 
say  about  the  recommendation  of  mercy  of  Mrs.  Surratt?'  next  inquired 
Mr.  Stanton.  'He  said,'  answered  Judge  Holt,  'that  she  must  be  pun- 
ished with  the  rest;  that  no  reasons  were  given  for  his  interposition  by 
those  asking  for  clemency,  in  her  case,  except  age  and  sex.  He  said  her 
sex  furnished  no  good  ground  for  his  interfering;  that  women  and 
men  should  learn  that  if  women  committed  crimes  they  would  be  pun- 
ished; that  if  they  entered  into  conspiracies  to  assassinate  they  must 
suffer  the  penalty;  that  were  this  not  so,  hereafter  conspirators  and 
assassins  would  use  women  as  their  instruments;  it  would  be  mercy  to 
womankind  to  let  Mrs.  Surratt  suffer  the  penalty  of  her  crime.'  After 
making  known  to  Mr.  Stanton  that  the  President  had  fixed  Friday  the 
7th  as  the  day  of  execution.  Judge  Holt  left." 

Burnett  adds  that  he  does  not  give  the  exact  words  but  the  substance, 
■which  of  course  is  all  he  could  do  after  the  lapse  of  twenty-four  years. 

Ekin  recalls  that  Holt  told  him  the  President  said  in  substance  (see 
his  letter  to  Holt  in  Befutation) : 

' '  There  was  no  class  in  the  South  more  violent  in  the  expression  and 
practice  of  treasonable  sentiments  than  the  rebel  women;  that  he,  by 
his  residence  in  that  section  of  the  country,  had  been  enabled  better  to 
judge  of  and  appreciate  and  .  .  .  was  better  informed  as  to  the  dis- 
loyalty of  such  women  than  the  members  of  the  commission  could  be, 
and  that  he  .  .  .  considered  that  the  interests  of  the  country  demanded 
that  an  example  should  be  made,"  etc. 

(Compare  versions  given  by  Harlan  and  by  A.  J.  himself  of  what 
was  said  on  this  subject.) 

NOTE  IV.     (p.  139) 
See  Harlan's  letter  in  Holt's  Vindication.     Harlan  does  not  specify 
which  of  the" two  eminent  statesmen" — Seward  or  Stanton — was  tlie 


APPENDIX  287 

author  of  this  memorable  utterance;  and  Burnett  in  his  paper  referred 
to  above  infers  from  the  language  that  it  was  Seward.  But  in  all 
probability,  notwithstanding  Harlan's  recollection,  Seward  was  not 
present  and  it  is  certain  that  if  present  he  would  have  shrunk  from  tak- 
ing so  prominent  a  part.  At  this  date  the  victim  of  Payne  had  not 
recovered  from  his  wounds,  and  according  to  Speed  (Imp.  Inv., 
806)  he  was  sick  in  July.  His  wife  died  on  the  twenty-first  of  June 
and  his  son  Frederick  was  still  in  a  dangerous  condition.  He  himself 
subsequently  testified :  ' '  Having  been  a  sufferer  in  that  business,  the 
subject  would  be  a  delicate  one  for  me  to  pursue  without  seeming  to  be 
overzealous  or  demonstrative."  (Imp.  Inv.,  380.)  Besides,  such  a 
deliverance  was  altogether  alien  to  the  easy-going  disposition  of  Seward, 
while  it  was  eminently  characteristic  of  Stanton  and  moreover  in  direct 
furtherance  of  his  purpose. 

NOTES  TO  CHAPTER  VI 

NOTE  I.  (p.  143) 
A  judge  in  Baltimore  during  the  progress  of  the  trial  charged  the 
grand  jury  that  "persons  exercising  such  unlawful  jurisdiction  are 
liable  to  indictment";  and  so  eminent  a  jurist  as  the  late  Rufus  W. 
Peckham  told  a  grand  jury  in  New  York  City  that  "grave  doubts,  to 
say  the  least,  exist  in  the  minds  of  intelligent  men,  as  to  the  constitu- 
tional right  of  the  Military  Commission  at  Washington  to  sit  in  judg- 
ment upon  the  prisoners  now  on  trial.  .  .  .  Thoughtful  men  feel  ag- 
grieved that  such  a  commission  should  be  established  in  this  free  coun- 
try, when  the  war  is  over,  and  when  the  common  law  courts  are  open 
and  accessible."     (Argument  of  Reverdy  Johnson,  Pitman,  262.) 

NOTE  II.  (p.  160) 
Chase  was  appointed  chief  justice  December,  1864,  and  took  his  seat 
on  the  thirteenth.  (2  Wall.  U.  S.  Mem.  ad  finem.)  Yet  he  refused  to 
hold  court  in  the  late  capital  of  the  Confederacy  until  every  vestige  of 
martial  law  was  cleared  from  the  soil  of  Virginia;  thereby  laying  down 
the  true  distinction  between  the  case  of  a  loyal  district  and  the  case  of 
a  subjugated  state.     (See  his  testimony  in  Imp.  Inv.,  544.) 


288  APPENDIX 

NOTE  TO  CHAPTER  VII 

NOTE  I.     (p.  173) 

Holt's  report  to  the  Secretary  of  War  on  the  ease  of  Clay  still  relies 
on  this  character  of  testimony;  quoting  with  approbation  Montgomery's 
sworn  statement  that  he  had  seen  Payne  in  Toronto  in  the  winter  of 
1865-6  talking  with  Clay  (Pitman,  24),  a  statement  absurdly  false. 
(See  Belle  of  the  Fifties  by  Mrs.  Clay,  320-1.) 

Holt  had  due  notice  beforehand  of  Conover's  character.  See  Belle 
of  the  Fifties  for  letter  of  Eev.  Stuart  Eobinson  of  June,  1865. 

Thaddeus  Stevens  related  how  Holt  * '  showed  him  the  evidence  upon 
which  the  President's  proclamation  was  issued."  Whereupon  "he  re- 
fused to  give  the  thing  any  support ' '  and  told  that  gentleman  ' '  the 
evidence  was  insufficient  in  itself  and  incredible";  adding,  "these  are 
no  friends  of  mine.  .  .  .  But  I  know  these  men,  sir.  They  are  gentle- 
men and  incapable  of  being  assassins."  (See  note  to  Ehodes'  Hist.,  V, 
158.) 

NOTES  TO  CHAPTER  VIII 

NOTE  I.     (p.  199) 

The  footsteps  he  heard  overhead  while  in  the  dining  room  after  his 
return  from  SurrattsviUe  on  Friday,  were  shown  to  have  been  the  foot- 
steps of  a  caller  on  Anna  Surratt  who  herself  answered  the  bell;  and 
the  ladies  of  the  household  noticed  nothing  unusual  in  the  demeanor  of 
Mrs.  Surratt  on  that  evening  and  failed  to  hear  her  invoke  the  prayers 
of  her  pious  boarder.  And  the  appointment  for  that  evening  that  the 
affidavit  makes  her  so  anxious  to  meet  must  have  been  forgotten,  for 
she  started  to  go  to  church  with  one  of  her  lady  boarders  and  had  she 
not  been  turned  back  by  the  inclemency  of  the  weather  she  would  not 
have  been  in  the  parlor  that  night  at  all.     (See  S.  T.,  689.) 

NOTE  II.     (p.  200) 

For  example,  the  scene  in  the  parlor  on  the  fatal  Friday  night  when, 
in  his  affidavit,  he  describes  Mrs.  Surratt,  at  the  same  hour  that  Booth 
was  about  his  bloody  work,  as  "nervous  and  agitated,"  he  now  further 
embellishes  by  adding  that  with  prayer  beads  in  her  hand  she  kept 
walking  to  and  fro,  and  asking  him  ' '  to  pray  for  her  intentions. ' ' 

It  was  upon  this  trial  that  he  let  fall  a  small  bit  of  testimony  that 
evidently  he  had  not  thought  of  at  the  Conspiracy  Trial  or  when  con- 


APPENDIX  289 

cocting  his  affidavit,  but  which  doubtless  he  foresaw  would  be  a  tempt- 
ing morsel  to  the  reporters  as  it  has  been  ever  since  to  writers  an  the 
subject. 

He  testified  that  in  Booth's  absence  he  "heard  her  call  him  'Pet.'  " 
«*I  am  positive  she  used  the  word  'Pet.'  "  (S.  T.,  400.)  That  word,  in 
all  the  mass  of  testimony  taken  on  both  trials  (except  his  own  on  this 
trial)  occurs  but  once;  and  that  is  in  Conover's  testimony,  taken  in  secret 
in  the  Conspiracy  Trial  and  not  given  to  the  public  until  after  Wiech- 
mann  had  testified  in  that  trial  and  after  he  made  his  affidavit. 

Conover  testified  that  in  Canada  "Booth  went  by  the  nickname  of 
*Pet'.  I  so  heard  him  called  by  Mr.  Thompson,  I  think;  by  Cleary  I 
am  sure,  and  by  others."     (Pitman,  31.) 

NOTE  III.     (p.  207) 

The  witness  Dye,  for  the  first  time  on  this  trial,  testified  that,  going 
to  Camp  Barry  along  H  Street  from  the  theatre  after  the  assassination, 
a  lady  opened  a  window  and  asked  what  was  wrong  downtown.  He 
replied  that  the  President  was  shot;  and,  she  asking  who  did  it,  he 
told  her  it  was  Booth.  Since  the  Conspiracy  Trial  he  learned  where 
Mrs.  Surratt  lived  and  it  then  occurred  to  him  that  she  resembled  the 
lady,  whereupon  he  went  and  identified  the  house. 

The  defence  produced  a  Mrs.  Lambert,  residing  at  587  H  Street,  who 
testified  that  she  was  the  lady  who  had  the  colloquy  with  the  soldier; 
and  she  was  corroborated  by  her  husband.     (S.  T.,  659-667.) 

NOTE  IV.     (p.  210) 

The  register  was  fiUed  up  with  names  to  the  end  of  the  year,  the 
same  the  prisoner  went  by  being  in  its  proper  place  in  his  own  hand- 
writing. The  prisoner  had  been  in  hiding  in  Canada  from  just  after 
the  date  of  the  entry  until  he  went  to  Europe  in  September.  These  two 
circumstances  are  sufficient  to  establish  his  presence  at  the  time  of  the 
entry  for  the  purposes  of  the  historian,  notwithstanding  the  register 
may  not  have  been  competent  evidence  under  the  rules  of  law.  Be  this 
as  it  may,  the  cash  book  of  the  same  date  wherein  "John  Harrison'* 
was  credited  with  the  money  he  paid  as  a  guest,  had  it  been  produced, 
could  not  have  been  excluded  and  its  admission  would  have  ended  the 
case. 

The  proprietor  of  the  hotel  who  brought  the  register  to  Washington 
did  not  bring  the  cash  book,  being  unable  to  fiind  it;  but,  on  his  return 


290  APPENDIX 

home  (if  Surratt  is  to  be  believed),  he  succeeded  in  unearthing  it  and 
sent  it  to  Mr.  Bradley;  an  incident  which  may  explain  the  reluctance  of 
the  prosecution  to  face  another  trial. 

(See  testimony  of  William  Failing,  S.  T.,  761  et  seq.,  and  Surratt 's 
Rockville  lecture,  ut  sup.) 

NOTE  V.     (p.  215) 

The  testimony  on  behalf  of  the  United  States  closed  on  the  fifth  day 
of  July — having  occupied  sixteen  working  days;  over  eighty  witnesses 
being  sworn,  of  whom  but  half  were  sworn  on  the  Conspiracy  Trial. 

The  testimony  for  the  defence,  opening  on  the  eighth  day  of  July, 
closed  on  the  twenty-second,  having  occupied  twenty-nine  working  days; 
over  ninety  witnesses  being  sworn. 

Testimony  in  rebuttal  closed  on  the  twenty-fourth,  sixty-four  wit- 
nesses being  sworn,  the  large  majority  on  the  character  of  witnesses 
impeached  by  the  defence  and  thirty  more  from  day  to  day  untU  the 
close;  the  defence  on  surrebuttal  swearing  twenty-four  and  the  testi- 
mony finally  closing  on  the  twenty-sixth. 

NOTE  VI.     (p.  216) 

ON  THE  DISBARMENT  OF  BRADLEY  SENIOR 

On  the  twenty-sixth  of  June  the  judge  asking  if  there  were  any 
other  witnesses  ready  on  the  part  of  the  United  States,  Bradley  point- 
ing to  the  witness  room  said :  * '  There  are  half  a  dozen  out  there  in  the 
penitentiary,"  whereupon  Merrick  added:  "Not  in  the  penitentiary 
now  but  they  will  be."  The  court  said  such  side-bar  remarks  were  not 
proper.  On  the  first  of  July,  McMiUian  being  examined  in  chief,  a 
question  by  Merrick  provoked  the  witniess  to  refer  to  the  counsel 's 
recent  remark  about  the  government  witnesses  as  "the  act  of  a  coward 
and  a  sneak."  The  court  reminded  the  witness  that  such  language  was 
unbecoming,  and  the  counsel  that  he  ought  not  ' '  to  worry  witnesses  into 
a  bad  temper."  The  next  morning  Bradley,  calling  the  attention  of 
the  court  to  the  language  of  the  witness,  insisted  that  it  was  due  to  its 
dignity  to  take  some  adequate  notice  of  the  matter.  The  judge  again 
admonished  the  witness  but  coupled  his  rebuke  with  an  intimation  that 
Merrick 's  remark  included  such  respectable  persons  as  General  Grant 
and  Frederick  Seward  who  were  in  the  witness  room;  a  construction 
which  Merrick  disclaimed  as  imfair.  There  the  affair  rested  for  the 
balance  of  the  trial. 


APPENDIX  291 

Immediately  after  the  jury  was  discharged,  Judge  Fisher  directed 
the  entry  of  an  order  striking  Bradley  from  the  roll  of  attorneys  prac- 
tising in  his  court;  reciting  that  after  the  passage  of  words  on  the  sec- 
ond of  July,  as  the  judge  was  descending  from  the  bench,  Bradley, 
after  charging  him  with  a  series  of  insults  from  the  commencement  of 
the  trial,  threatened  the  judge  with  personal  chastisement. 

The  case  subsequently  came  up  before  the  supreme  court  of  the 
district  which  made  another  order  for  his  disbarment;  and  Bradley 
obtained  from  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  a  mandamus 
annulling  the  latter  order  on  the  ground  that  the  court  that  made  it  had 
no  jurisdiction  to  punish  for  contempt  committed  in  another  court. 

Bradley  brought  an  action  for  damages  against  Fisher  alleging  that 
his  order  was  a  malicious  act  founded  on  a  fabricated  statement  of 
facts;  but  he  was  nonsuited  on  the  ground  that  judges  were  not  liable 
in  damages  for  acts  done  in  the  discharge  of  their  duties,  provided  the 
court  had  jurisdiction. 

(7  Wall.  (U.  S.  Eep.)  364;  13  WaU.  335), 

NOTES  TO  CHAPTER  IX 

NOTE  I.     (p.  223) 
The  counsel  added: 

"You  were  going  to  show,  too,  that  nobody  prevented  access  to  the 
President  on  the  part  of  those  who  wanted  to  get  a  pardon.  Why 
didn't  you  do  it?  .  .  .  You  remember  that  day,  gentlemen.  Twenty- 
four  hours  for  preparation.  Priest,  friend,  philanthropist  and  clergymen 
went  to  the  Executive  Mansion  ...  to  implore  for  that  poor  woman 
three  days'  respite  to  prepare  to  meet  her  God,  but  got  no  access.  The 
heart-broken  child  .  .  .  stretched  upon  the  steps  that  lead  to  the 
Executive  Chamber  .  .  .  raised  her  hands  and  prayed  to  any  one  that 
came  .  .  .  'Let  me  have  access,  that  I  may  ask  for  but  one  day  for  my 
poor  mother — just  one  day! '  Did  she  get  there?  No,  And  yet  says 
the  counsel  there  was  no  one  to  prevent  access  being  had.  Why  don't 
you  prove  it?  .  .  .  How  would  I  not  have  rejoiced  in  the  fact.  .  .  .  Who 
stood  between  her  and  the  seat  of  mercy?  Has  conscience  lashed  the 
chief  of  the  Bureau  of  Military  Justice?  Does  memory  haunt  the 
Secretary  of  War?  Or  is  it  true  that  one  who  stood  between  her  and 
Executive  clemency  now  sleeps  in  the  dark  waters  of  the  Hudson,  while 
another  died  by  his  own  violent  hand  in  Kansas?" 


292  APPENDIX 

[Preston  King  committed  suicide  on  November  12,  1865,  by  jumping 
oif  a  ferryboat  into  the  Hudson,  with  a  bag  of  shot  in  each  overcoat 
pocket.  "Jim"  Lane  cut  his  throat  July  11,  1866 j — these  were  the 
keepers  of  the  door  to  the  executive  office.] 

NOTE  II.     (p.  234) 

During  the  greater  portion  of  the  eight  years  since  the  hanging  of 
Mrs.  Surratt,  Bingham  and  Holt  were  living  in  the  capital,  standing 
shoulder  to  shoulder  during  the  contest  over  reconstruction  and  the 
impeachment  and  trial  of  the  President,  and  must  have  been  cognizant 
of  the  scene  on  the  Surratt  Trial  when  the  record  with  the  petition  was 
exposed  to  public  view. 

Bingham,  who  had  drafted  the  paper  in  question,  even  before  the 
execution  had  taken  pains  to  put  himself  in  possession  of  the  facts  of 
the  case,  and  yet  through  all  the  vicissitudes  of  these  eventful  years, 
he  never  so  much  as  whispered  them  into  the  ears  of  the  oflB.cer  whom 
they  most  concerned.  As  Holt  says:  "Every  time  this  slanderous 
rumor  reached  him  .  .  . — which  was  doubtless  often — his  awakened 
memory  must  have  reminded  him  that  he  held  in  his  keeping  proof  that 
the  rumor  was  false."  That  Bingham  was  guilty  of  such  deliberate 
cruelty  and  after  so  many  years'  insensibility  to  his  friend's  sufferings 
should  rush  so  eagerly  to  his  relief,  is  hardly  credible  even  on  his  own 
confession.  But  the  explanation  he  gives  passes  the  bounds  of  belief. 
Why  should  a  statesman — occupying  so  independent  a  position — to  the 
condign  injury  of  his  professional  brother  "scrupulously  observe"  the 
advice  of  Stanton  which,  as  Holt  exclaims,  was  "a  sad,  sad  mockery"? 
And  why,  if  the  death  of  that  adviser  did  not  release  him  from  his  bond 
of  silence,  did  the  death  of  Seward,  who  gave  no  advice,  loosen  his 
tongue?  If  (to  employ  the  heated  rhetoric  of  the  judge-advocate), 
"after  the  Secretary  of  War  had,  amid  the  world's  funeral  pomp,  gone 
down  into  his  sepulchre,  the  truth  came  up  out  of  the  grave  to  which  he 
had  consigned  it,"  why  was  the  resurrection  delayed  until  the  Secre- 
tary of  State  had  joined  his  colleague  in  the  underworld? 

Furthermore,  who  can  credit  that  Stanton  uttered  advice  so  fatuous 
in  itself  and  so  injurious  to  his  faithful  subordinate?  As  Holt 
pathetically  remarks:  "Committing  my  reputation  to  the  arbitrament 
of  a  tribunal  from  which  the  proofs  of  my  innocence  were  to  be  carefully 
excluded."  "A  deliberate  and  merciless  sacrifice,"  indeed,  as  Holt 
calls  it.  But  what  drove  the  master  thus  to  nail  his  servant  to  the 
cross?    The  servant  lays  it  to  "fear  of  Andrew  Johnson's  resentment 


APPENDIX  293 

added  til  a  determination  on  his  part  to  leave  my  reputation — then  under 
fire  from  hia  silence — to  its  fate."  When  the  "advice"  was  given 
Stantor  could  have  had  no  grounds  to  "fear  the  resentment"  of  the 
President  for  his  uttering  the  truth;  and,  when  afterwards  he  delib- 
erately challenged  that  resentment  he  acted  as  though  it  was  the  last 
thing  he  feared;  and  it  does  not  lie  in  the  mouth  of  this  most  obsequi- 
ous of  his  minions  to  charge  him  with  the  cowardly  baseness  of  betray- 
ing a  follower  whom  he  knew  to  be  innocent  to  screen  an  enemy  whom 
he  knew  to  be  guilty.  He  probably  thought  that,  if  his  own  reputatio* 
could  stand  the  "sUenee,"  that  of  his  co-worker  in  the  dark  might  be 
left  to  shift  for  itself. 

NOTE  III.     (pp.  239,  252) 

Speed's  phenomenal  reticence  was  fully  exposed  to  the  country  a 
year  after  his  death. 

In  the  July  number  of  the  North  American  Beviexo  for  July,  1888,  was 
published  a  correspondence  carried  on  between  Holt  and  Speed  in  the 
year  1883 — furnished  to  the  magazine  by  Holt.  Pursuant  to  promise, 
Holt  sent  his  friend  his  two  pamphlets,  the  Vindication  and  the  Refuta- 
tion of  ten  years  before,  with  a  request  that  Speed  "carefully  examine 
the  proofs  arrayed"  in  their  pages.  In  his  letter  Holt  makes  it  clear 
that  the  exaggerated  estimate  of  the  inviolability  of  cabinet  proceed- 
ings exhibited  by  his  correspondent  to  excuse  his  silence  on  the  former 
occasion,  has  no  application  to  a  case  like  the  one  under  discussion;  and 
puts  to  him  squarely  the  alternative  of  at  last  doing  justice  to  an  officer 
whom  he  knows  to  be  innocent  or  of  being  an  accomplice  of  an  assassin 
of  character. 

Speed,  for  six  months,  begs  off  on  the  pleas  of  the  loss  of  his  spec- 
tacles, of  bereavement,  of  press  of  business,  and  then  replies:  "After 
very  mature  and  deliberate  consideration,  I  have  come  to  the  conclusioai 
that  I  cannot  say  more  than  I  have  said." 

Holt  apparently  was  driven  frantic  by  such  treatment.  "Your  for- 
bearance towards  Andrew  Johnson,  of  whose  dishonorable  conduct  yon 
have  been  so  well  advised,  is  a  great  mystery  to  me.  "With  the  stench 
of  his  baseness  in  your  nostrils  you  have  been  all  tenderness  for  him, 
while  for  me,  .  .  .  you  have  been  as  implacable  as  fate." 

It  seems  never  to  have  occurred  to  the  judge  advocate  that  Speed  in 
fact  had  nothing  to  say  in  his  favor,  but,  rather  than  confess  ignorance 


294  APPENDIX 

on  so  critical  a  matter,  took  refuge  in  the  irrelevant  plea  of  cabinet 
secrecy.  Such  a  supposition  would  have  dispelled  the  mystery  he  com- 
plains of. 

Speed  offered  to  write  a  letter  "not  to  be  used  until  after  Holt's 
death";  but  Holt,  with  a  perspicacity  which  he  did  not  show  in  the 
similar  case  of  Bingham's  information,  replied  "that  a  letter  thus 
strangely  withheld  from  the  public  would  not,  when  it  appeared,  be 
credited. ' ' 

Speed  states  also  that  he  offered  to  open  his  mouth  if  Johnson  con- 
sented; but  this  Holt  denies,  pronouncing  the  statement  an  evidence  of 
his  friend's  failure  of  memory. 

The  "bait"  that  Speed  would  not  take  was  clothed  in  the  following 
words : 

"I  have  learned  that,  although  you  gained  the  information  while 
a  member  of  the  Cabinet,  it  was  not  strictly  in  your  capacity  as  such, 
but  that  at  the  moment  I  laid  before  the  President  the  record  .  .  . 
with  the  recommendation  .  .  .  ,  you  chanced  to  be  so  situated  as  to  be 
assured  by  the  evidence  of  your  own  senses  that  such  petition  or  recom- 
mendation was  by  me  presented  to  the  President,  and  was  the  subject 
of  conversation  between  him  and  myself." 

If  this  was  true  (and  Speed  does  not  deny  it)  why  did  not  Speed 
avail  himself  of  the  coincidence?  And  how  was  it  that  Holt  did  not 
know  it  at  the  date  of  his  first  appeal  to  the  ex-attomey  general? 

NOTE  IV.  (p.  253) 
Colonel  Burnett  in  his  paper  read  before  the  Loyal  Legion,  April  3, 
1889,  says:  "And  now  for  the  motive.  .  .  .  The  presidential  bee  was 
buzzing  under  the  accidental  presidential  hat.  .  .  .  Somebody  whispered 
loud  enough  for  Mr.  Johnson  to  hear — perhaps  the  bee  buzzed  it — that 
if  the  Southern  States  could  be  reconstructed  previous  to  the  presiden- 
tial convention  of  1868  and  he  should  be  found  friendly  and  faithful 
to  the  South  in  that  work,  there  were  fifteen  Southern  States  whose 
electoral  votes  might  be  found  solid  for  him  as  the  Democratic  nominee 
and  he  would  only  need  the  votes  of  two  or  three  Northern  States  in 
addition  to  carry  off  the  renomination.  You  know  how  the  poison  took 
.  .  .  how  he  fought  the  Congress  with  a  bitterness  and  boldness  unpar- 
alleled in  history.  .  .  .  And  now  turning  to  Mrs.  Surratt  and  her  case. 
Over  her  execution  a  great  clamor  was  raised  throughout  the  country 
not  only  by  those  lately  in  rebellion,  and  those  in  the  North  who  were 


APPENDIX  295 

in  sympathy  with  that  rebellion,  but  almost  universaUy  by  the  Eoman 
Catholics.  Mr.  Johnson  heard  this  clamor  and  'his  startled  ambition 
grew  Bore  afraid'  .  .  .  His  new  friends  and  allies  were  calling  npon 
him  with  a  loud  voice  to  know  why  he  had  not  heeded  the  appeal  for 
mercy.  Here  was  a  sufficient  motive — the  motive  that  changed  the 
whole  nature  of  the  man  .  .  .  spoiled  the  purpose  of  his  life. 


INDEX 


Aiken,  Frederick  A.,  counsel  for 
Mrs.  Surratt,  she  not  in  irons, 
280  (app.). 

Arnold,  Samuel,  in  plot  to  capture, 
12,  28,  33,  34,  35;  letter  of  to 
Booth,  36,  61,  94,  269  (app.); 
letter  of  to  author,  263  (app.)  ; 
arrested,  66;  arraigned,  103; 
charge  against,  104-5;  defence 
of,  116;  sentence  of,  129;  on 
Dry  Tortugas,  181;  author  of 
"Lincoln  Plot,"  182;  pardoned, 
183  n.  id.;  death  of,  264  (app.). 

Ashley,  rep.  from  Ohio,  remark  on 
Pres.  Johnson,   174-5. 

Atlantic  Monthly,  The,  anecdote 
of  the  elder  Booth  in,  6. 

Atzerodt,  George  A.,  in  plot  to 
capture,  24,  28,  33,  35,  36;  char- 
acter of,  25;  part  in  assasina- 
tion,  40-1,  44,  52-3,  59 ;  arrested, 
67;  arraigned,  103;  defence  of, 
116;  confession  of,  124;  hung, 
140. 

B 

Baker,  LaPayette  C,  appears,  73 ; 
takes  charge  of  pursuit  of 
Booth,  74;  buries  body,  87; 
methods  of,  98-9;  characterized, 
id.;  in  Canada  for  letters,  166; 
barred  from  White  House,  goes 
for  letter  of  Johnson's,  169; 
reward  of,  276-7  (app.). 

Baker,   Luther   Byron,   Lieutenant 
of   expedition   after   Booth,   74 
takes    charge    at    Garrett's,    83 
catches  Booth   as  he   falls,   84 


conveys  body  to  the  monitor, 
86;  best  witness,  278  (app.); 
report  of,  276. 

Bingham,  John  A.,  special  asst. 
judge  adv.,  102,  93,  95;  on 
Eeverdy  Johnson,  110;  quoted, 
112-3 ;  argument  of  on  C.  T., 
125-7;  drafts  petition,  132-3; 
argument  of  on  jurisdiction, 
146-150;  encounter  with  Butler, 
177;  correspondence  with  Holt, 
233-4.     See  note  (app.),  292. 

Black,  Jeremiah  S.,  argument  of 
in  Milligan  case,  157-9. 

Booth,  Edwin,  7,  9,  8,  14,  17. 

Booth,  John  Wilkes,  boyhood  of, 
6;  on  stage,  7;  at  scaffold  of 
John  Brown,  id.;  in  oil,  8;  per- 
son and  character,  10;  devises 
plot  to  capture,  11 ;  prepara- 
tions, 12,  13,  15;  meets  Dr. 
Mudd,  16;  acts  with  brothers, 
in  New  York,  17 ;  deposits  letter 
with  Clark,  18,  26;  meets  Sur- 
ratt, 19  ;  meets  Chester,  23 ;  first 
attempt,  26,  28;  enlists  Payne, 
29-30;  at  theatre  with  P.  and 
S.,  33-4;  first  meeting  of  band, 
id. ;  acts  Pescara  id. ;  second  at- 
tempt and  failure,  35-6;  with 
Chester  in  N.  Y.,  39;  hears 
speech  of  Lincoln,  40;  con- 
ceives design  of  assassination, 
41;  movements  thereupon,  41, 
42,  43,  44,  46;  scene  at  the 
theatre,  47;  fires  shot  and  flies, 
48;  at  Navy  Yard  Bridge,  63; 
at  Surratt  Tavern,  68;  at  Dr. 
Mudd's,  69;  in  the  short  pines, 


(297) 


298 


INDEX 


76-7;  writes  diary,  78;  crosses 
Potomac,  79;  writes  note  to  Dr. 
Stewart,  80;  in  bam  at  Gar- 
rett's, 81-3;  last  words  and 
death,  85-6;  autopsy  and  burial, 
87;  did  he  shoot  himself?  87-8, 
275   (app.)   n. 

Booth,  Jr.,  Junius  Brutus,  7,  8,  14. 

Booth,  Sr.,  Junius  Brutus,  1-6, 
259    (app.). 

Booth,  Kichard,  2,  4. 

Bradley,  Joseph,  counsel  for  Sur- 
ratt,  208;  address  to  jury,  216; 
disbarred,  215,   290   (app,). 

Bureau  of  Military  Justice,  The, 
preparations  of  for  trial  of 
assassins,  92;  blends  the  two 
plots,  95 ;  hand  of  in  S,  T.,  21.^. 

Burnett,  Henry  L.,  on  Mil.  Com., 
102;  takes  charge  of  record  and 
petition,  134;  hears  of  Presi- 
dent's decision,  137;  vouches  for 
report  of  trial,  223;  paper  of, 
294   (app.), 

Butler,  Benjamin  F.,  closes  for 
U.  S.,  in  Milligan  case,  159-161 ; 
encounter  with  Bingham,  176- 
180, 

Butler,  J.  George,  K«v.,  letter  of 
to  Holt,  232, 


Chase,  Salmon  P.,  C.  J.,  minority 
opinion  of  in  Milligan  case, 
164;  refuses  to  hold  court  in 
Va.,  287  (app.), 

Chester,  Samuel  K.,  23,  28,  39. 

Clampitt,  John  W.,  counsel  for 
Mrs,  Surratt,  123,  141  n. 

Clay,  Jr.,  Clement  C,  12,  101, 

Conger,  Everton  J.,  heads  expedi- 
tion to  capture  Booth,  75;  ar- 
rests Jett,  83 ;  sets  fire  to  ware- 
house,   85;    thinks    Booth    shot 


himself,  id.',  takes  articles  from 
Booth 's  body  to  Wash.,  86 ;  state- 
ment on  trial,  90;  character  as 
witness,  275  et  seq.   (app.). 

Conover,  Sanford,  chief  expert 
witness  for  Bureau,  93;  case 
reopened  to  hear,  124;  testimony 
of,  168;  suborns  witnesses,  id.; 
evidence  proved  false,  171;  con- 
victed and  sentenced,  173;  testi- 
mony of  against  Pres,  Johnson, 
174;   mem.  of,   180-1. 

Conspiracy  Trial,  The,  theory  of 
prosecution,  93;  opening  of, 
101-3 ;  Charge  and  Specification, 
104;  animus  of  judges,  105; 
character  and  class  of  testimony, 
113;  length  of  and  number  of 
witnesses,  115. 

Corbett,  Boston,  described,  88; 
his  story  as  given  to  Conger, 
88;  as  given  to  Doherty,  id.; 
as  given  on  C.  T.,  89;  career, 
id.,  90;  reviewed,  275  et  seq. 
(app.). 

Cottingham,  ,  specimen  wit- 
ness, 281-2  (app,). 

Cox,  Walter  S.,  counsel  for 
O'Laughlin  and  Arnold,  charac- 
terizes charge,  114;  argument 
of,  124. 


Davis,  David,  reads  majority 
opinion  in  Milligan  case,  162-4. 

Davis,  Jefferson,  93,  101,  104,  115, 
129,  165,  169,  170,  173,  174, 
183  n. 

Detectives,  carnival  of,  71-2, 

Diary,  Booth's,  quoted,  78;  cited 
by  Butler,  178. 

Doherty,  Edward  P.,  commands 
cavalry  detachment,  74;  takes 
charge  of  Herold,  85;  character 


INDEX 


299 


as    witness    and    article    of    in 
Century,  275   (app.). 
Dye,   S.   M.,    Sergeant,   on  C.   T., 
and  S.  T.,  202,  206. 

E 

Ewing,  Jr.,  Thomas,  Gen.,  counsel 
for  Spangler  and  Mudd,  105, 
112-3;  argument  of  against 
jurisdiction,  123;  argiiment  of 
for  S.  and  M.,  124. 

Ekin,  James  A.,  Gen.,  102,  111; 
copies  petition,  133;  letter  of 
to  Holt,  230. 


Farwell,  Leonard  J.,  53-4. 

Field,  David  Dudley,  argument  of 

for  Milligan,  155-6. 
Fisher,  George  P.,  judge  on  S.  T., 

192;  ruling  of,  210;  charge  of, 

217-8. 

G 

Gardiner's  Hist,  of  Eng.,  cited, 
283  (app.). 

Garfield,  James  A.,  argument  of 
for  Milligan,  156-7. 

Grant,  U.  S.,  Gen.,  order  of  stop- 
ping exchange  of  prisoners, 
10-1;  to  go  with  President  to 
theatre,  41;  on  Penn.  Ave.,  43; 
opinion  of  on  Stanton,  56. 

H 

Harlan,  James,  139;  letter  of  to 
Holt,  235,  239,  286   (app.). 

Harris,  T  M.,  Gen.,  on  Mil.  Com., 
102;  attacks  Eeverdy  Johnson, 
106-9;  book  of,  281   (app.). 

Hartranft,  J.  F.,  Gen.,  102; 
denies  that  Mrs.  S.  was  ironed, 
280   (app.). 

Hawk,  Harry,  47,  49. 


Herold,  David  E.,  character  of, 
24-5;  drives  out  with  carbines, 
35;  conceals  weapons  in  Kirk- 
wood,  41;  attends  Payne,  46; 
on  fatal  night,  52 ;  identified, 
59;  at  Navy  Yard  Bridge,  63; 
at  Surratt  Tavern,  68;  at 
Mudd's,  69;  in  short  pines,  77; 
surrenders,  84;  arrcigned,  103; 
no  defence,  115;  hung,  140. 

Holahan,  John,  61,  63,  207. 

Holt,  Joseph,   92,   93,    112;    takes 
record   to   President,    134;    con- 
fidential interview,  134  et  seq.; 
his     "Brief      Review,"      135; 
writes  out  death  warrant,   137; 
at   White    House,    138;    on    the 
"Sons  of  Liberty,"  153;  after 
letters  of  Davis,   166;   on  Con- 
over,     168,    172,     174;     vouches 
for  report  of  C.  T.,  223;  letter 
of    his    chief    clerk,    225,    231; 
brings  record  to  court  on  S.  T., 
228;    obtains   letter    from    Gen. 
Ekin,    230;    from    Eev.    Butler, 
232 ;   correspondence  with  Bing- 
ham, 233;    with   Speed,   Harlan 
and    Mussey,    235;     "Vindica- 
tion" of,  236-9,  242;  "Refuta- 
tion" of,  246,  251;  after  Speed 
again,   251-2,   292    (app.) ;    mo- 
tives   of    Johnson,    252;    head 
and  front  of  offence  of,  254. 
Howe,  Alvin  P.,  Gen.,  102;  attack 

of  on  witness,  110-1. 
Hunter,  David,  Gen.,  102;  remark 
of    to    Eeverdy    Johnson,    109; 
see  280  (app.). 


Johnson,  Andrew,  on  night  of 
assassination,  53-4;  at  death- 
bed of  Lincoln,  54;  ill  at  close 
of  Mil.  Com.,  134;   confidential 


300 


INDEX 


interview  with  Holt,  134-7; 
sends  for  record,  225;  petition 
not  there,  230;  answer  to  Holt, 
240-5;  returns  to  Senate,  251. 

Johnson,  Edward,  Gen.,  witness 
assailed  by  Howe,  110-1. 

Johnson,  Eeverdy,  connsel  for 
Mrs.  S.,  106;  assailed  by  court, 
106-110;  argument  of  against 
jurisdiction,  123,  143-4. 

Jones,  Thomas  A.,  76-9. 


Keene,  Laura,  on  stage,  45,  47,  49. 
King,  Preston,  134-5,  138. 


Lane,  James,  138. 

Lee,  Edwin  G.,  Gen.,  sent  Surratt 
to  Elmira,  184;  on  S.  T,,  208. 

Letters — of  Booth  deposited  with 
Clark,  quoted  18;  in  full,  265-8 
(app.);  of  "Sam"  to  Booth, 
94;  in  full,  269-70  (app.). 

Lincoln,  Abraham,  leaves  for  the 
front,  26;  returns  and  makes 
speech,  39-40;  enters  theatre, 
46;  last  look  of,  47;  shot,  48; 
carried  out  of  theatre,  50;  au- 
topsy, funeral,  journey  home,  62. 

Lloyd,  John  M.,  tenant  of  Surratt 
tavern,  20;  denies  knowledge 
of  Booth  and  Herold,  63-4;  con- 
fesses imder  pressure,  68;  wit- 
ness against  Mrs.  S.,  118,  119, 
120-1;  on  S.  T.,  198. 

Loan,  rep.  from  Missouri,  174. 

M 

Maddox,  J.  L.,  47,  48. 

Mason,  Victor  Louis,  paper  of  in 

Century      (April      1896),      259 

(app.). 


Matthews,  John,  27;  takes  letter 
from  Booth,  43;  on  stage,  47; 
hears  shot,  49;  on  S.  T.,  206. 

McMillan,  Lewis,  betrays  Surratt, 
185,  186;   on   S.   T.,   205. 

Merrick,  Richard  T.,  coimsel  for 
Surratt,  215;  alludes  to  peti- 
tion, 223 ;  address  to  jury  of, 
extract  from,  291  (app.), 

Merritt,   James,  171. 

Military  Commission,  The,  ordered, 
100;  convened,  101;  members 
of,  102;  secret  session,  128; 
record  and  petition,  129-133. 

Milligan  case,  153;  argmnent  of, 
154-161;    decision,   161-164. 

Montgomery,  Richard,  213. 

Mudd,  Samuel  T.,  introduced  to 
Booth,  16;  mentioned,  17;  ia- 
troduces  Booth  to  Surratt,  22; 
sets  Booth's  leg,  69;  arrested, 
71;  enters  court  room,  103;  de- 
fence of,  116-7;  at  Dry  Tortu- 
gas,   181-2;   pardoned,  183  n. 

Mussey,  R.  D.,  Gen.,  private  see. 
to  Pres.  Johnson,  letter  of  to 
Holt,  236. 

N 

North  American  Review,  The 
(July  1888),  correspondence  of 
Speed  and  Holt  in,  293   (app.), 

0 

O'Laughlin,  Michael,  in  plot  to 
capture,  12,  27,  28,  29,  33,  35, 
36,  39,  61;  on  fatal  night,  116; 
enters  court  room,  103;  defence 
of,  116;  sentence,  129;  death, 
18L 

"Our  American  Cousin,"  point 
in  play  of  when  shot  fired,  47. 


INDEX 


301 


Payne,  Lewis,  meets  Booth,  29,  30 ; 
meets  Sui-ratt,  31;  examinee 
theatre  box,  32;  in  plot  to  cap- 
ture, 33,  35,  36,  38;  with  Booth 
before  White  House,  40;  at 
Herndon  House,  44;  assault  on 
Seward,  46-50;  horse  of  found, 
59 ;  arrest  of,  65 ;  identified,  66 ; 
enters  court  room,  103 ;  defence 
of,  115;  plea  for,  124;  hung  de- 
claring Mrs.  S.  innocent,  140, 
141. 
Peckham,    Eufus    W.,    charge    of 

cited,  287   (app.)- 
Petition    for    Commutation    given, 
133;    taken  charge   of  by   Bur- 
nett, 134;  rumor  of,  137-8;  ap- 
pears    on     S.     T.,     223-4;     lost 
sight  of,  229. 
Pierrepont,   Edwards,   counsel   for 
U.    S.    on    S.    T.,    192;    remark 
about   B.'s    diary,   193;    change 
of  tactics,  210;    how  he  brings 
Surratt     to      Wash.,      211-214; 
sums  up,   216;    alludes   to   peti- 
tion, 223;  produces  it,  224;  re- 
statement as  to,  227. 
plot  to  capture,  inception  of,  10- 
11;    how   treated   by    Confeder- 
ates, 13;  progress  of,  16-18,  26, 
32-3,   33-6;    identified  with   plot 
to     kill,     94-5;     Macaulay     and 
Green  cited,  id. 

K 

Eathbone,  Major,  47-8-9. 

Eecord    of    Mil.    Com.,    described, 

133-4;    facsimile   of   part,    283- 

4  (app.). 
Eewards    offered,    for    arrest    of 

Booth   etc.,   67;    of   Davis   etc., 

100-1. 


8 

Sanders,  George  N.,  13,  101. 
Selby  letter,  The,  198,  261  et  seq. 

(app.). 
Seward,  William  H.,  thrown  from 
carriage,     44;     assaulted,     id.; 
theory  of  as  to  trial  of  Davis, 
173-4;    death    of,   233;    see  286 
(app.). 
Spangler,  Edward,  scene  shifter  at 
Ford's,    19,    46,   47,    66;    enters 
court    room,    103;    defence    of, 
116;    sentence  of,   130;   on  Dry 
Tortugas,    181;    pardoned,    181, 
n.  183. 
Stanton,  Edwin  M.,  56,  57,  58,  59, 
61,  67,  86,  87,  93,  94,  169,  188, 
226,  232. 
Speed,    James,    Atty.    Gen.,    argu- 
ment of  on  jurisdiction  of  MU. 
Com.,  150-2;  opens  argument  in 
MiUigan    case,    154-5;    goes    to 
Canada  to  buy  Cleary,  169;  let- 
ter  of   to  Holt,   235,   238;    cor- 
respondence with,  293   (app.). 
Star  (Evening)  Wash.,  The,  article 

in,  265   (app.). 
Ste.  Marie,  Henry,  betrays  Surratt, 
187;     statements    of,    188;     on 
S.     T.,     205-6;     reward     paid, 
id.,  n. 
Stevens,     Thaddeus,     remark     on 
complicity  of  Confederates,  288 
(app.). 
Stewart,    Richard,    Dr.,    note    to 

from  Booth,  80. 
Sun,  N.  Y.,  The,  Tanner's  state- 
ment in,  271   (app.). 
Surratt,  Anna  E.,  19,  65,  66,  138-9, 

216. 
Surratt,  Isaac,  19. 
Surratt,  Jr.,  John  H.,  19-21;  first 
meets  Booth,  22;  joins  him,  24; 
enlists  Herold  and  Atzerodt,  id.; 


302 


INDEX 


goes  to  Port  Tobacco  in  search 
of  boats,  26;  in  N.  Y.,  28;  at 
L. 's  second  inauguration,  31; 
examines  private  box,  32;  at 
first  meeting  of  band,  35;  goes 
with  Atzerodt  to  overtake  Her- 
old,  36;  conceals  carbines,  id.; 
leaves  for  Richmond,  id.;  re- 
turns en  route  for  Montreal,  96; 
treatment  of  his  case,  96-7;  case 
against  him  on  C.  T,,  121-2;  as 
stated  by  Bingham,  122-3;  at 
Elmira  on  night  of  assassina- 
tion, 184;  sends  telegram  to 
Booth,  thence  to  Canandaigua, 
to  Montreal,  185 ;  crosses  ocean, 
in  London,  Paris  and  Eome, 
186;  enlists  in  Papal  Zouaves, 
betrayed  and  arrested,  187;  es- 
capes, rearrested  and  brought 
back,  189 ;  opening  of  trial  of, 
193-6;  witnesses  to  his  presence 
in  Wash.,  202-6;  alibi  of,  208- 
210;  at  Brainard  House,  184, 
209;  at  Webster  House,  209; 
change  of  tactics  of  prosecu- 
tion, 210-5;  disagreement  of 
jury,  218;  discharged,  219;  lec- 
tures at  Rockville,  n.  to  p.  20. 

Surratt,  St.,  John  H.,  19. 

Surratt,  Mary  E.,  19;  opens 
boarding  house  at  Wash.,  20; 
applies  for  leave  of  absence  for 
John,  26;  with  Wiechmann  to 
Surrattsville,  42;  house  of 
searched,  61;  arrested,  64;  con- 
fronted with  Payne,  65,  273-5 
(app.)  ;  enters  court  room,  103; 
not  ironed,  280  (app.)  ;  defence 
of,  117,  118-9,  120-1 ;  her  case  in 


secret  session,  130-2;  petition 
for,  133;  suppliants  for  pardon 
of,  138;  daughter  of  there,  139; 
discussion  of  by  Cabinet,  id. ; 
execution  of,  140-1;  Butler  on, 
in  House,  179;  evidence  against 
her  on  S.  T.,  198-200;  not  the 
lady  at  the  window,  289  (app.), 
n.  111. 

T 

Taft,    Dr.,    Charles,    letter    of    to 

Oldroyd,   49. 
Tanner,    James,    statement    of    in 

N.  Y.  Sun,  271  (app.). 
Thompson,  Jacob,  12,  101, 
Trial    of    Conspirators    (official), 

by    Benn   Pitman,    contents   of, 

221-2;  vouched  for  by  Holt  and 

Burnett,  id. 

W 

Wallace,  Lew,  Gen.,  102,  109,  112. 

Webster  House,  register  of,  209; 
excluded,  210;  cash-book  of, 
289   (app.). 

Wiechmann,  Louis  J.,  at  college 
with  Surratt,  20;  teaches  at 
Wash.,  21;  gov't  clerk,  id.;  vis- 
its Surratt,  id.;  boarder  at  Mrs. 
S. 's,  id.;  meets  Booth,  22;  At- 
zerodt, 28;  Payne,  31,  33;  men- 
tioned, 35,  42,  63-4,  97,  98;  tes- 
timony against  Mrs.  S.  on  C.  T., 
118-9;  on  S.  T.,  198-9;  his  post- 
mortem affidavit,  199 ;  see  notes 
I,  II  in  (app.),  288;  borrows 
the  word  "Pet,"  from  Conover, 
289   (app.). 

Withers,  William,  orchestra-leader 
at  Ford's,  48. 


The  Impeachment  and  Trial  of 
Andrew  Johnson 

By  DAVID  MILLER  DEWITT  ^X  l"i.^ij'^°" 

"In  addition  to  the  official  sources  of  information  the  author  has  had 
the  assistance  of  a  series  of  scrap  books  compiled  by  Col.  William  Moore, 
one  of  the  private  secretaries  of  President  Johnson,  from  documents, 
periodicals  and  newspapers  of  the  day.  But  while  these  are  not  generally 
accessible  and  contain  information  that  is  a  decided  aid  in  enlivening  the 
pages,  the  main  facts  are  sufficiently  set  forth  in  the  references  to  official 
publications  and  accessible  material  whereby  the  history  can  be  verified 
at  every  critical  point." — Baltimore  Sun. 

"Mr.  DeWitt  tells  the  story  of  the  long  fight  between  the  legislature 
and  the  executive,  culminating  in  the  impeachment,  the  trial,  and  the  ac- 
quittal of  the  President,  in  a  style  that  is  forcible,  and  often  dramatic.  He 
dwells  with  strong  emphasis  upon  the  entire  disregard  of  legal  rights  and 
constitutional  limitations  shown  by  the  enemies  of  the  President.  The 
ejectment  of  Stockton  from  the  Senate  with  scarcely  the  semblance  of  a 
legal  excuse  in  order  to  gain  the  coveted  two-thirds  majority  necessary 
to  pass  measures  over  the  President's  veto  ;  the  repeated  attempts,  with 
the  same  purpose  in  view,  to  admit  Colorado  to  statehood,  almost  against 
her  will ;  the  passage  of  the  clearly  unconstitutional  tenure  of  office  act, 
and  of  the  statute  which  in  effect  took  from  the  President  the  command 
of  the  army  expressly  conferred  upon  him  by  the  Constitution,  make  up 
but  a  partial  measure  of  the  wholly  unwarrantable  course  pursued  by  the 
Republican  majority  in  Congress.  When  we  sum  up  all  the  facts  which 
Mr.  DeWitt  recites  in  support  of  his  arraignment  of  the  leaders  of  that 
majority,  when  we  remember  the  vindictive,  bitterly  abusive,  and  some- 
times ribald  speeches  with  which  the  President  was  reviled  both  in  the 
Senate  and  the  House,  we  cannot  but  feel  that  Johnson  emerged  from 
the  struggle  with  less  discredit  than  did  some  of  his  accusers.  .  .  .  Mr. 
DeWitt  is  particularly  happy  in  his  character  sketches.  He  gives  us  vivid 
pictures  of  the  fiery  and  fanatical  Stevens,  the  unemotional  and  one-idead 
Summer,  the  mysterious  Stanton,  and  theshifty  and  theatrical  Butler."  — 
Law  Notes,  New  York. 

"History  records  many  instances  where  sovereigns  and  official  rulers 
have  been  dethroned  and  put  to  death  ;  but  the  impeachment  and  trial  of 
Andrew  Johnson  in  the  spring  of  1868  is  indeed  a  unique  chapter  in  the 
world's  history.  From  a  constitutional  standpoint  it  may  be  said  that  this 
is  the  most  interesting,  exciting,  and  important  episode  in  the  history  of 
the  United  States.  Mr.  David  M.  DeWitt's  "Impeachment  and  Trial  of 
Andrew  Johnson,  Seventeenth  President  of  the  United  States,  a  History, ' ' 
to  be  published  by  The  Macmillan  Company,  will  illustrate  many  facts  re- 
lating to  this  period  that  have  never  before  been  clear  to  a  large  number 
of  people.  The  introduction  carefully  and  fully  reviews  the  events  of  the 
first  two  years  of  President  Johnson's  administration  which  have  any 
bearing  upon  the  coming  impeachment." — Chicago  Tribune. 

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Notable  Books  of  Related  Interest 


ESSAYS  ON  THE  CIVIL  WAR  AND  RE- 
CONSTRUCTION AND  RELATED  TOPICS 

By  WILLIAM  ARCHIBALD  DUNNING,  Ph.D. 

Professor  of  History  in  Columbia  University 

360  pages,  doth,  8vo,  $2.00  net;  by  mail,  $2.16 

"An  invaluable  contribution  to  American  historical  literature,  cover- 
ing a  most  important  period  of  national  life.  It  deals  with  a  time  when 
men's  heads  were  heated  and  their  judgments  warped  through  proximity 
to  the  fires  of  political  rage,  yet  in  itself  it  is  written  in  a  manner  so  cool, 
so  dispassionate,  so  unswayed  by  the  mighty  passions  of  the  war  time, 
that  the  influence  which  it  exerts  over  the  mind  of  the  reader  is  tremen- 
dous . " — Chicago  Inter-  Ocean . 

"A  valuable  contribution  to  the  constitutional  and  political  history  of 
the  War  for  Secession  and  of  the  problems  which  it  bequeathed  ;  .  .  . 
there  is  not  one  of  these  essays  which  does  not  deserve  careful  perusal." 
— New  York  Sun. 


CIVIL   WAR   AND    RECONSTRUCTION 

IN  ALABAMA 

By  WALTER  L.  FLEMING,  Ph.D. 

Professor  of  History  in  West  Virginia  University 
(Columbia  University  Press)  Cloth,  8vo,  $5.00  net ;  by  mail,  $5.28 

"...  Necessary  to  a  fair  understanding  of  the  causes  of  the  war,  the 
conditions  which  accompanied  it  and  the  reasons  for  the  failure  of  the 
South  to  accomplish  its  independence.  It  is  no  surface  study.  Mr.  Flem- 
ing has  gone  to  the  roots  of  the  whole  matter,  and  the  reader  who  follows 
his  story  will  find  cause  to  change  many  of  his  preconceived  opinions  be- 
fore he  closes  the  book.  .  .  .  The  volume  is  of  remarkable  interest,  full 
of  facts  which  have  not  before  been  accessible.  .  .  .  No  library  of  Ameri- 
can historical  literature  would  be  complete  without  it." 

— Boston  Transcript. 


RECONSTRUCTION  IN  MISSISSIPPI 

By  J.  W.  GARNER 

Cloth,  8vo,  $3.00  net 


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MR.  JAMES  MORGAN'S 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

THE  BOY  AND  THE  MAN 

"It  holds  a  unique  place  among  Lincoln  biographies  for  graphic 
simplicity,"  says  one — "A  masterly  composition,"  says  the 
Chicago  Tribune. 

Cloth,  illustrated,  $1.50 

MR.  NORMAN  HAPGOOD'S 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

THE  MAN  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

Illustrated  with  portraits,  facsimiles,  etc. 
Cloth,  leather  back,  $2.00  net;  by  mail,  $2.14 

"Its  depth,  its  clearness,  its  comprehensiveness,  seem  to  me 
to  mark  the  author  as  a  genuine  critic  of  the  broader  and  the 
higher  school,  of  that  school  which  had  for  its  noblest  professor 
in  modern  times  the  great  German  scholar,  dramatist,  and  teacher, 
Lessing."— y«5/z»  McCarthy. 

"A  life  of  Lincoln  that  has  never  been  surpassed  in  vividness, 
compactness,  and  lifelike  reality." — Chicago  Tribune. 


PROF.  EDWIN  E.  SPARKS'S 

THE  MEN  WHO  MADE  THE  NATION 

AN  OUTLINE  OF  UNITED  STATES  HISTORY 
IN  BRIEF  SKETCHES  OF  ITS  LEADING  MAKERS 

Cloth,  illustrated,  viii  +  415  pages,  $1.00 
School  Library  Edition,  50  cents  net 


MR.  OWEN  WISTER'S 

THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  WASHINGTON 

"Mr.  Wister's  biography  is  very  meaty.  Rich  in  anecdote  of 
interpretative  character,  conveying  a  veracious  likeness  of  ...  . 
no  superhuman  figure,  but  a  warm-hearted  man." 

— Boston  Advertiser. 

Cloth,  illustrated,  $2.00  net;  by  mail,  $2.12 


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"It  IS  not  probable  that  we  shall  see  a  more  complete  or 
better  balanced  history  of  our  great  civil  war."— ^A^  Nation. 


HISTORY    OF    THE 

UNITED  STATES 

FROM    THE    COMPROMISE    OF    1850    TO    THE    FINAL    RES- 
TORATION    OF    HOME    RULE     AT     THE     SOUTH     IN     1877 

By  JAMES  FORD  RHODES,  LL.D.,  Litt.D. 

Complete  in  seven  octavo  volumes,  attractively  bound  in  dark  blue  cloth 


I  The  first  volume  tells  the  history  of  the  country  during  the  four  years- 
icen  taZA.     futile  attempt  to  avoid  conflict  by  the  Missouri  Compromise,  ending  with 

II  The  second  volume  deals  with  the  stirring  events  which  followed  this  re 
|ocj^_  1860  P^^'"  through  all  the  Kansas  and  Nebraska  struggles,  to  the  triumph  of  the 
Aoot-ioovf     then  newly  organized  Republican  party  in  the  election  of  Lincoln  in  i860. 

___  The  third  volume  states  the  immediate  effect  upon  the  country  of  Lincoln's 

III  election;  covers  the  period  of  actual  secession;  the  dramatic  opening  of 
I860- 1862     the  war,  the  almost  light-hearted  acceptance  of  it  as  a  "three-months'  pic- 
nic"; and  closes  in  the  sobering  defeat  of  Bull  Run. 

IV  The  fourth  volume  follows  the  progress  of  the  war  in  vivid  discussions  of 
._-_  10/LA  campaigns,  battles,  the  patient  search  for  the  right  commander,  and  the 
Io02-lo64     attitude  toward  this  country  of  the  British  government  and  people. 

The  fifth  volume  opens  with  the  account  of  Sherman's  march  to  the  sea. 

V  The   adoption  of  the  Thirteenth   Amendment,  Lincoln's  assassination, 

1864-1866     Johnson's  administration,  and  the  state  of  society  in  the  north  and  south 

AOUY-Aouu     ^j  jjjg  gjjj  ^^  jj^g  exhausting  war  are  fully  treated.    The  volume  ends 

with  an  account  of  the  political  campaign  of  1866. 

The  sixth  volume  considers  the  enactment  of  the  Reconstruction  Acts  and 

•yi  their  execution;  the  impeachment  of  President  Johnson,  the  rise  of  the 

iQAiC  107-1     -^^  Klux  Klan,  the  operation  of  the  Freedman's  Bureau,  the  ratification 

loOO-lo72     of  the  XlVth  and  the  passage  of  the  XVth  Amendment,  are  among  other 

topics  in  the  volume. 

The  seventh  volume  begins  with  an  account   of    the   Credit  Mobilier 

VII  scandal,  the  "Salary  Grab"  Act,_and  describes  the  financi  1  panic  of  1873. 

1872.1S77     The  account  of  Reconstruction  is  continued  with  a  careful  summing  up, 

xot^'XOi/      and  the  work  ends  with  an  account  of  the  presidential  campaign  of  1876 

and  the  disputed  Presidency. 

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Half  calf  or  morocco,  $32 
Three-quarter  levant,  $40 


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